charlieknighte

[charlieknighte]

little crimes

Ethan Hitchcock/Maelgwyn

Modern AU - University AU - Fake/Pretend Relationship - Pining - Getting together (kinda) - Family Drama - Silly hockey rivalries

13,060 words

A gift for Matt Prairiecryptid in the Secret Samol fandome exchange <3

content warnings: unhealthy family dynamics

If Maelgwyn has to bear another holiday with his family, he may as well have his shitty boyfriend-for-hire at his back—but things aren't so simple when it feels like his stupid little crush could toe any number of the lines that box in his life.

Despite all of the faults of the horrid little basement suite that the Six call their hideout, Maelgwyn feels his shoulders relax the moment he slips inside. It’s a glorified boiler room in nearly all respects, with its bare cement floor covered in cheap faux-Persian rugs and its walls lined in Ikea bookshelves—and yet he’s spent more time here than his own apartment in the past year, huddling around the space heater on beanbag chairs or the shitty futon, passing around beer and joints with his friends. It’s more of a home than anyplace he’s ever lived.

The smell of clove cigarettes hits him immediately—one of the Hitchcocks has been smoking with one of the tiny metal-rimmed windows open, unsuccessfully venting the smoke. It hovers somewhere above eye level, filling the L-shaped apartment. Maelgwyn tries not to cough, eyes watering. “ Bonsoir ,” says the Hitchcock, in an exaggerated Quebecois accent that’s pushing reality even for him. “To whom do I owe ze pleasure?” He waves a hand at Maelgwyn over his computer setup. The back of his monitor faces the door, his desk—along with his brother’s—creating a divider along a corner of the room, doing a poor job of hiding their beds from prying eyes. Maelgwyn’s chest flutters despite himself. He sternly tells it to be quiet. He can’t even be sure which twin this is yet.

“It’s me. Cut that out,” he says, picking his way through the various books and beanbags and articles of clothing littering the floor. The moment he rounds the corner of the desk, the Hitchcock tugs out his earbuds, leaning back in his godawful gaming chair and folding his hands over his stomach. He has a beanie crammed low over his eyes, curls escaping on all sides, and he’s inexplicably wearing jeans in the comfort of his own home. Maelgwyn had expected the need to linger, scrutinizing the planes of his face and the details of his nervous habits to distinguish who he’s dealing with, but in the end he doesn’t have to. Hitchcock breaks out into a stupid grin at the sight of him—a grin that draws him in closer, inviting him to laugh at an inside joke with him. God forbid Edmund would look at him like that. Maelgwyn has to tell his chest to be quiet again.

“Ethan,” Maelgwyn says carefully. He leans against the desk, trying not to stare too contemptuously at the game of Fortnite that he had so generously paused for him. “Christmas is coming up.”

The Six will be enveloped into Aubrey’s extended family for Christmas, as always. Maelgwyn desperately wishes he could just stay and enjoy a dinner with friends and keep fostering his stupid little crush in peace, but failing to go home risks a downright nuclear response from his parents. Ethan steeples his fingers and swivels his chair back and forth. "Mm. I see" He gets right to the point—the element of surprise did fuck-all for Maelgwyn. "Are you paying me? I did say I charge extra for the good boyfriend act."

“My parents will pay for plane tickets and feed us. Plus a hundred bucks.” It’s all Maelgwyn has until his next paycheque. He’s sticking it out, knowing that the price of telling his parents he’s out of money is far too dear to pay. He hopes to god Ethan doesn’t press for more.

Ethan makes a face like this is a less than generous offer. He spins around in his chair and looks at the ceiling, considering it. “I thought you said you'd do it for free last time," Maelgwyn presses.

Ethan pouts at him. "I said I'd do it for donuts. And you only bought me two ."

Maelgwyn had taken a sizable bite out of one, too. At the time, Ethan had only laughed and helped wipe powdered sugar off his chin. Maelgwyn knows he's being facetious now. "I'll buy you the dozen I promised," he says, and then softens his voice. "Please?"

Ethan stops spinning and lolls his head over to look at him. “I’ll do it for you,” he says, “but don’t let word get around that you fucked me over. Right?”

Maelgwyn could kiss him. He tries not to think about that too hard. “Thank you.”

“Don’t say I never did anything for you. Are you staying? Edmund has Composition 401. I’m lonely.” He droops into his chair dramatically.

“Tough shit. I have work.”

“Ugh. You really dropped by just to ask something from me? Typical politician’s son.” Ethan busies himself—or possibly just pretends to busy himself—with his computer again, untangling his earbuds to plug them back into his ears.

“Hey,” says Maelgwyn, walking backwards through the apartment and then thinking better of it when he nearly trips over a beanbag chair. “Watch it. You’re going to be dating a politician’s son in a couple weeks.”

“Yeah, yeah. You’re not paying me to pretend to enjoy it.” Ethan leans around his computer to give him a shitty grin. Maelgwyn flips him off, one hand on the doorknob. When his head has disappeared back behind his computer, Maelgwyn reluctantly lets himself back out.

He didn’t realize how much he’d acclimatized to the basement in the few short minutes he’d been inside, but the air feels cold and damp in comparison, albeit free from secondhand smoke. Maelgwyn sighs, hiking the steep stairs back up and feeling his knees twinge. He’s not looking forward to his closing shift.  

As he begins to pick his way across campus towards the Starbucks where he toils and suffers for a bit of extra allowance, his thoughts stubbornly drift towards Ethan no matter how many times he tries to slap them away. This crush of his, it’s—it’s silly, not to mention a betrayal of a friend’s trust and a possible danger to the group dynamic. And more than a danger to the group—god, imagine having to explain this to his parents . They may have accepted Maelgwyn dating him, but being in a relationship with him, a serious one, would be unthinkable. He thinks that, and then hates himself for thinking of it so strategically, the way a politician would. Is it even realistic to think that it could be a danger? That would be presuming that Ethan would ever reciprocate it. At the end of the day, it’s better for everyone that Ethan doesn’t see Maelgwyn in that way—never will. 

Maelgwyn is surprised at how much he hurts himself with that firm conclusion. He jams his hands in his pockets, buries his head in his jacket, and speeds up his pace. 

---

"A gated community?" Ethan whistles, twiddling his vape thoughtfully. "It's a wonder that your parents let you out of their sights long enough to go for a piss, mon cher . I mean, someone might kidnap you off the toilet bowl."

"Stop it. I didn't grow up here," Mael says, but he winces. The luxuries of his upbringing had faded into the background of the stress of being shuffled from place to place, from parents' to cousins' to grandfathers', and then back with one parent and not the other—but anytime his friends bring up their derision for his parents' oft-flaunted wealth, he feels like those problems are frivolous and luxurious. 

Lugging their carry-on suitcases behind them, he and Ethan walk through a row of perfectly even cookie-cutter mini-mansions with manicured but plain lawns, their siding ranging from white to beige to an adventurous taupe in a lame attempt at breaking up the visual monotony. Maelgwyn would hardly be able to recognize Samot's house if it weren't for Samothes's obnoxiously shiny black BMW parked in the driveway.

Maelgwyn can hardly muster the feeling of coming home at all, despite Samot's insistence that there's a bedroom ready for him whenever he wants it. This house had been carelessly bought during Samot's brief separation with Samothes, and though it now serves as a neutral base of operations for Samot's mayorly aspirations, Maelgwyn has never gotten over the feeling of this as a transitory space, like a disturbingly neat vacation home that he doesn't feel comfortable using the full facilities of. Lost in thought, he gets halfway up the driveway before realizing that Ethan isn't trailing after him. He turns to see him still at the curb, gagging on his own smoke. “You okay?” Maelgwyn asks as he doubles over, coughing out clouds. Ethan slowly straightens up, pointing a hateful, trembling finger over Maelgwyn's head. Maelgwyn twists to see a Leafs flag halfheartedly hung over Samot’s garage door.

"You—you're—you can't make me go in there." Ethan spits at him, as if Maelgwyn personally put it up to spite him. “You’re insulting my French-Canadian heritage.”

“Ethan, you’re more brown than me," Maelgwyn says, half-laughing.

"I can't believe I didn't ask for more money," Ethan says petulantly, changing tack to stubbornly look away from the flag, holding up a hand to shield his eyes from the sight. "One hundred isn't nearly enough for me to pretend to be dating the son of a Leafs fan."

"Oh, c'mon." Maelgwyn walks back down the driveway, conscious that eyes may be at his back, and takes Ethan's hand. Though he still scowls, Ethan's fingers fold between his willingly. “You can tear it down and piss on it or something,” Maelgwyn says lightly. 

Ethan tucks his vape away and takes his suitcase again. “Thought you wanted me to run the good boyfriend routine this time.” He tugs at Maelgwyn’s hand, leading him up the driveway before he can see his expression. Maelgwyn hurries after him, swallowing. 

“Um, well—we didn’t really agree on that, did we?” He follows Ethan up the stairs, their carryons clacking awkwardly up the steps. By the time Maelgwyn stumbles up to the landing, Ethan has assumed a blank, placid standard Hitchcock expression that Maelgwyn can’t even imagine trying to read. Maelgwyn takes his hand away and starts fumbling with his keys. “Maybe we should just… play it by ear.”

He rifles through his bulk of spare keys to his dozen homes that aren’t really homes and finally finds the right one. He fits it into the lock and takes a breath, dread settling heavily into the bottom of his lungs. “Fair enough,” Ethan finally says. He steps up beside Maelgwyn, bumping him with his hip gently. Maelgwyn’s shoulders release a fraction of their tension, but it all returns when he turns the key. It prickles up his spine and tightens his shoulders, like the hair raising on the back of a cat.

He steps into the foyer. Nothing immediately terrible happens. He’s not sure if the living room has gotten even more clinically white and beige since the last time he was here, or if he’d just forgotten how much it looked like a car dealership’s waiting room. The Tristé siblings are sprawled irreverently over the long, uncomfortably rectangular sectional couch. Maelgwyn takes another step, emboldened by the sight of possible allies—and knocks his head on a comically large sprig of mistletoe hung on the entryway of the living room. 

Angelo’s head whips up. “ Hey ! No entry without paying the cringe tax.” He points up to the mistletoe gleefully. Adelaide raises her eyes from her phone, twinkling with mischief. Maelgwyn hears Ethan’s footsteps stop beside him. His blood rushes so loudly in his ears that he stops being able to process sound. 

It all happens very fast. The Tristés yell and jeer, and Ethan turns to Maelgwyn with a perfect easy smile on his face. "Want to?" he asks.

"Sure," says Maelgwyn, amazed that he manages to get it out without choking, and Ethan steps forward and kisses him as if they'd practiced it. It's just a little kiss, but it’s good. Not as awkward as he expected. Maelgwyn hasn't been kissed in a long time—not since he and Castille decided that something about their fumbling affections was decidedly not right and called it off, at this point over a year ago. Maelgwyn had spent a lot of time since then huddling under his weighted blanket and trying to convince himself that he didn’t wish it was a real, warm human weight. It disappoints him how quickly that lie evaporates when Ethan’s face presses against his, warm and soft. Wanting to be touched—it feels like yet another luxury problem that Maelgwyn can barely afford, but goddamn it, it’s a problem nonetheless. 

Ethan steps away just as fast as he’d leaned in and smiles at him, arm still looped around his waist. Maelgwyn steadies himself against his suitcase and hopes desperately that the Tristés don't ask why he looks so dazed. 

Angelo and Adelaide heckle them for a few moments more, and then settle down. Adelaide’s jeers sound particularly loud and sharp, and Maelgwyn winces internally. She’ll be hard to win over if they go the good boyfriend route after all. “You’re so funny,” he says. “Did dad put these up?”

“Oh, you know it,” Angelo says. He holds two fingers up to his mouth and makes a loud retching noise. Adelaide shakes her head, back to her phone. 

“ Baobei ?” Samot calls from the kitchen. “Is that you?” Maelgwyn didn’t think his stomach could have gotten any heavier, but it’s as if lead is pinning him to the ground. 

“Just a second, dad,” he calls back, grip tightening on the handle of his suitcase to ground himself. 

“Come say hi to your father!” 

His father—so that means Samothes is here. Maelgwyn toes off his shoes, grimacing to the side so that his cousins won’t see it. “One second! ” 

“Oh,” says Ethan behind him. “Before we go.” Glad for any sort of delay, Maelgwyn turns to see him taking something from his pocket and takes a moment to identify it as Tristero’s stolen watch. Any relief gone, he fights the urge to tackle Ethan to the ground as if he’s about to be targeted by snipers, and instead watches helplessly as Ethan dangles it between two fingers and offers it to Adelaide. "Merry Christmas."

Angelo whistles. Maelgwyn clenches his teeth, but surprisingly, Ethan’s fingers aren’t immediately bitten off. Adelaide slowly reaches out to take the other end of the watch, regarding him with narrow-eyed curiosity. She slips the watch into the purse at her feet and folds her hands in her lap. "Nicely done,” she says, cautiously diplomatic. “My father doesn’t fly in until this afternoon. I figure this means you'll be sticking around?"

"As long as you'll have me," Ethan says, grinning easily and putting his hands back in his pockets.

"Well, at least you know how to pick your battles, because let me tell you—you might think you've won with his parents, but you're only getting started."

“ Baobei! ”

Maelgwyn gives her a harried smile—which she doesn’t return—and grabs Ethan’s sleeve to drag him to the kitchen before Samot has a conniption.

He’s just in time to catch Samothes ducking in from the dining room to kiss his husband under another overstuffed bunch of mistletoe. Maelgwyn yelps in dismay, shielding his eyes too late. “ Dad! ” He’s not sure how much of his disgust is real and how much of it is a spiteful use of familial teasing to express the frustration that being around Samot usually makes impossible to vocalize.

Samot steps back, laughing brightly. “What? It far from the first time you’ve seen that, Maelgwyn.”

“And it was just as embarrassing the other billion times.” 

Samothes raises a hand to Ethan and Maelgwyn and silently retreats to the dining room, his glasses on and his laptop under his arm. Maelgwyn figures that Samot lost tonight’s argument about work during family time. At the very least, that’s one variable mostly out of play for the evening. Samot smiles and moves through the pointlessly large kitchen to come fold him into a hug, which Maelgwyn is too jet-lagged to resist. His hair is in a carefully messy bun that Maelgwyn is sure took twenty minutes to artfully arrange, and he’s wearing a gauzy tank top that probably cost more than Maelgwyn’s term tuition. “I’m so glad you could make it,” he effuse. As if not making it would cause anything less than a family-wide witch hunt. 

“Merry Christmas, dad,” Maelgwyn mumbles.

“Merry Christmas, p’tit loup .” Samot sounds slightly absent. Maelgwyn remembers in a painfully self-conscious pang that Ethan is standing right behind him. Samot graciously releases him, his sights trained on a new prize. “Ethan. It’s so wonderful to see you.” He says wonderful how one might joke that a pile of puke smells like a rose.

This time, at least, Ethan is trying. He’s wearing a neat pink button-up and earrings that match, but he's left his awful mustache grow back in and waxed the ends. It's hard enough for Maelgwyn to read Samot, especially when he's in a grandstanding mood like this, but his once-over of Ethan seems markedly less negative than his first reception of him. “Hey,” Ethan says, giving him a breezy wave in place of a handshake—he seems to have learned his lesson last time. “Same to you, and all.”

They're still playing the backwards game of underhanded politeness that Maelgwyn's family is hopelessly embroiled in, but more cards are on the table this time. It’s sharply clear to Maelgwyn that this is Ethan's second chance to introduce himself as an upstanding member of the family—and, watching Samot smile at Ethan with a touch of satisfaction, as if he’d personally put Ethan back in his place—he finds that he quietly, selfishly doesn’t want him to. He wants to be able to know that Ethan is truly on his side, not just presenting the face that others want to see. He wants to keep Ethan for himself. 

His head spins slightly from the weight of that admission. Samot circles the island in the middle of the kitchen, piled high with takeout boxes. Maelgwyn sees pork belly, jaozi, and spring rolls. Despite himself, his stomach rumbles. They’d interrupted Samot in the midst of plating each box to look like he’d cooked it himself, artfully smearing sauces and sprinkling herbs, adding beds of vegetables and small porcelain sauce containers. Maelgwyn could probably count the number of times Samot has actually used this kitchen on half of one hand. “Wine?” Samot asks, proferring a bottle of white that he’d already begun to enjoy.

“I’m okay,” says Maelgwyn, at the same time that Ethan says, “Sure.” Maelgwyn winces, knowing that a glass of wine will stretch this encounter out from a few spare minutes to a lengthy, prying ordeal.

“ Wonderful, ” Samot says again, showing his artificially white teeth. Maelgwyn slinks into one of the stools at the counter, trying to make himself small and less of a target. Luckily, Samot’s eyes are glued to Ethan as he fetches them a pair of stemless glasses and pours them each a generous dose. Maelgwyn feels instantly awful for having considered himself lucky—he’s throwing Ethan to the wolves here.

“Thanks,” Ethan says, accepting his glass. He slides into the stool next to Maelgwyn, his knee pressing into his. He and Samot each take their first sip, and Samot looks expectantly at him over the rim of his glass. Maelgwyn knows that he’s poised to critique whatever pedestrian opinion Ethan has of his choice—a frequently used and frankly irritating power move—but instead Ethan drains half of his glass, smacks his lips, and doesn’t deign to comment. He puts the glass down and idly traces the rim. He’s looking back at Samot with a directness that makes Maelgwyn feel like he isn’t even part of the conversation. “So,” he says, casual but with an undertone that Maelgwyn doesn’t like. “A Leafs household, huh?”

Maelgwyn should have expected this—but he didn’t think such a small and obvious dig would ruffle someone like Ethan Hitchcock. He glances at him and finds a strange tension in his shoulders, one that he’s never seen in him before. He doesn’t see Samot’s face, but he can hear the smugness in his voice when he says, “Of course. Who wouldn’t be, after their last season? I think that this year, they could even go all the way.”

Maelgwyn knows for a fact that Samot wasn’t even remotely interested in their last season, or any season prior. Again, he thinks that Ethan should be able to see through this, but instead he scoffs loudly, bristling and on the offensive. “Last year was a fluke. With the restructure they just had–-and anyway, they’re cursed. They’re not going any further than the first round.” 

“Oh? And the Canadiens are?”

Maelgwyn should never have let him wear that jersey. He should’ve warned him that Samot would do this—nitpick at a little detail of his life until he found a substantial thread that he could pull at. He stares down at the counter, watching Ethan’s knuckles go white as he clenches the edge of his seat. “They’re going in with a good group this year,” he says through his teeth. “Caulfield, Gallagher, Suzuki, Price—”

“I think Price is a little overrated,” Samot says, cocking his head at him in the way he does when he knows he’s got someone outmaneuvered. “Don’t you?”

Ethan is silent in shock, and then he splutters, and then he bursts out, “How can you say that? Price is a pillar of the franchise! He’s—he—they’d be nowhere without him!”

Maelgwyn hears Samot sip his wine and gently set it back down, not worked up in the slightest. "I just think he gets more credit than he deserves." A satisfied air emanates from him, even if Maelgwyn can’t bear to look at him. Ethan stammers in rage beside him. Maelgwyn reaches out and grabs his hand, squeezing to a degree that’s more painful than comforting. 

“Ethan,” he says, quiet and sharp. “It doesn’t matter.” He knows this an admission of weakness, a display to Samot that he can’t bear to watch Ethan lose this battle—but he doesn’t care. He wants this to stop before it can snowball out of control, before the family gets word that his boyfriend shouted during Christmas , at his father no less. Ethan cuts off whatever he was about to say, letting out a furious breath. He drains another third of his wineglass, setting it down carelessly. 

“We were just having a conversation,” Samot says lightly. Maelgwyn feels fury curl in his chest, but he holds it there until it cools. The kitchen is uncomfortably silent. He can hear the patter of Samothes typing in the other room. Maelgwyn feels the quiet in the marrow of his bones and in his molars, unsettling him to his core. "So, Maelgwyn," Samot says abruptly, "are you staying the week?"

Maelgwyn can't even reply before nausea overwhelms him. He can’t bear seven more days of this. He opens his mouth, not even knowing what he’s about to say—but Ethan squeezing his hand brings him to a confused halt. With a piteous touch to his voice, Ethan says, "Actually, I was hoping he could come to meet my mother with me."

Maelgwyn tries not to let his gaze shoot up to him too obviously. He’s finally brave enough to look at his father instead: blinking and open-mouthed, wineglass frozen below his lips. The silence, this time, feels oddly in Maelgwyn’s favor. "I thought you weren't in touch with your mother,” Samot finally says, his triumph fading to the back of his voice. 

"Yeah, well… We’d been looking, you know? And it turned out she’d been looking, too.” Ethan lets go of Maelgwyn’s hand and fishes his phone out of his pocket, flipping through his image gallery. He pulls up a picture of him and Edmund with their arms around a tall woman, all of them laughing, pointing at each other in disbelief. She does look strikingly like them—self-assured, curly-haired, merry-eyed. Maelgwyn bends in to get a closer look, but Ethan is turning the phone to show it to Samot. “This is the first time we ever met—just about a month ago. She’s waiting to celebrate Christmas once I get back home,” Ethan says, the pitiful note in his voice becoming an overtone. “I thought it would be a good time to introduce her to Maelgwyn. If you wouldn’t mind, that is.” 

All of this is new to Maelgwyn—and it’s bullshit, all of it. He feels it. As Samot stares at the image, his wineglass still hovering in the air, Maelgwyn knows that he feels it too. There’s a small furrow in his brow, a dent in his armor. Slowly, he smiles, far too stretched and thin to be real. His eyes are bright, but not with anything that Maelgwyn could describe positively. "Is that so," he says, nearly through clenched teeth. “Well. Isn’t that wonderful. Of course Maelgwyn can go.” He turns his wide-eyed look on Maelgwyn, almost accusatory—but Maelgwyn finds himself unable to be hurt by it. Of course it’s bullshit. Of course, and they all know it, but Samot can’t say it, not after he’d cooked up that crock of shit to get on Ethan’s nerves. Maelgwyn almost wants to laugh, but he settles for squeezing Ethan’s knee to work out his euphoria.

“Thanks, dad,” he says in a rush. “It means a lot.” 

“Of course,” Samot says stiffly. He takes a breath to steady himself and downs the rest of his wine in one gulp. Ethan finishes his own glass in small, serene sips. There are a few beats of silence again, and Maelgwyn hastily readies fake answers to any questions Samot might have—but in the end Samot just sighs and goes back to his plating, plucking dumplings from a box to arrange them inside of a bamboo steamer. “Well. Your room is ready if you’d like to settle in, Maelgwyn . ”

“Thanks, dad.” Maelgwyn slides out of his seat, trying not to be visibly relieved at the merciful dismissal. Ethan slips his hand into his again as he follows him to the door. Maelgwyn’s chest thrills—at the contact, at the success of their on-the-fly plan, at the assuredness of having someone on his side. 

“Oh,” Samot says. “I nearly forgot. Ethan will sleep on the couch."

Ethan nearly tumbles into Maelgwyn as they halt at the doorway. He blinks at Samot disbelievingly. For a moment Maelgwyn thinks he's going to burst out, but instead he politely says, "There's not enough rooms?"

Samot glances up at them over his array of dishes. For the first time in the night, his gaze is openly cold. “Well, the Tristés are taking the guest room, and—pardon me—I don’t feel quite comfortable having you lodge with my son yet.”

“ Dad ,” Maelgwyn says, mortified, that ribbon of anger beginning to wind its way back into his chest. He hates being called my son , like a toddler who has to be protected from his own decisions. “Seriously?”

The look Samot gives him is less frigid, but only just. “I don’t mean to embarrass you, sweetheart, but don’t you think it’s improper?”

You do mean to embarrass me, Maelgwyn thinks, but he clenches his teeth shut against the accusation. “Fine. Whatever,” he manages, which is the best he can do—but still not enough. Samot tilts his head at him, mouth wrinkling disapprovingly. Maelgwyn knows he’ll hear about it later, but for now he needs out of this fucking kitchen, this conversation. He grips Ethan’s hand and pulls him back into the living room. 

He marches them past the Tristés, who barely have time to lift their heads from their phones before they pass. He hears Angelo say something to Adelaide, voice lilting jovially, and his anger grows into his head, warming him to the tips of his ears. Ethan stumbles behind him, pausing in the door to the foyer as Maelgwyn lets him go to fumble with his suitcase. After a moment, he follows suit, pressing down the handle to his carry-on and hoisting it up, following Maelgwyn as he stomps up the staircase to the side of the door. 

“Mael,” he hisses as he follows him up. Maelgwyn doesn’t answer, too afraid of the Tristés hearing him snap something he’ll regret. That’s what his anger feels like when its blistering heat dissipates—fear. He waits until they’re safely up in the corridor to the bedrooms before he collapses, throwing his suitcase down on the carpet and leaning heavily against a wall. “Maelgwyn,” Ethan says again, stepping up beside him, a hand hovering over his shoulder. “ Esti de calice. Are you okay?” Maelgwyn usually hates being seen like this, but for once something pushes him closer to another person rather than away. Stumbling upright, he mushes his face into Ethan’s shoulder and lets him put his arms around him. 

“I fucking hate it here,” he mumbles into his shirt. "I want to go home."

"I don't blame you, cherie ." Ethan strokes his hair, smoothing his hand down to the small of his back and pulling him close so their hips bump. They stay there for a moment, Maelgwyn gripping Ethan’s sleeve and breathing in his shitty cologne, slowly working the agonizing mix of feelings in his chest into something more manageable and compartmentalized. It’s the best he can do while he’s still here. Ethan leans in to murmur into his curls, "I was going to keep it a surprise, but I talked Aubrey into saving dinner for the night we get back.”

Mael is startled into raising his head. “You didn’t.” 

Ethan could deflect, but instead he gives him that a gentle, half-nervous real smile of his. “If this goes anything like it did last time… I thought you might need it after we got back.”

I love you , Maelgwyn thinks, startling himself with it. He doesn’t know if it’s true, but it had come to mind so fast . "I could kiss you," he says instead, because the thought is beginning to recur and become hard to ignore. Ethan gives him a crooked little smile, much more like his usual expression, and glances upward pointedly. Maelgwyn looks up to see another bunch of mistletoe, pinned above the top of the stairs. He’s sure Ethan is trying to be obnoxious, but all it does is set his heart thumping and render him incapable of a comeback other than a nervous laugh. "Alright," he says, and puts his arms around Ethan's neck in anticipation.

Ethan kisses him, and fuck him, it isn't chaste this time. While Maelgwyn recovers from the urge to make a truly embarrassing noise, he steps away like nothing happened, like he didn't just slip him some tongue in his father’s house. Maelgwyn catches his breath and leans against him to murmur in his ear, "Fuck you." Ethan just smiles serenely in response, his cheek rounding against Maelgwyn’s. Maelgwyn sighs and butts their heads together. He brushes his lips against his ear and murmurs, "Good kisser."

"You would know."

They both ignore the fact that there's no one around to see this, and there was no point in doing it at all.

“Really, though,” Ethan murmurs. “You okay?” 

Maelgwyn finally steps back, feeling cold where he was once pressed against Ethan. He shrugs, managing to put a casual face back on for the sake of his sanity. “I am now. C’mon.” 

It begins to occur to him as they walk to his room that Samot might raise hell if anyone spotted Ethan here with him, but he’s too tired to care. Samot will be busy fussing over ‘his’ dinner until the guests arrive, and Maelgwyn is looking forward to getting a goddamn break until then. He finds his door and leads Ethan in, and for the first time he looks at ‘his’ room through someone else’s eyes. It’s as clinical as the rest of the house, indistinguishable from a guest room, the dressers bare and the furniture unbearably chic. His sheets are crisply folded, tucked in like a hotel bed. Ethan pauses at the door, taking the emptiness in. “It’s so moving to be in your childhood room, Mael.”

Maelgwyn snorts, shoving him with his forearm. "Shut up ."

“So many memories made here. I can feel it."

“You’re such a dick.” Maelgwyn doesn’t want to unpack and settle into this room—not ever, but especially when he’ll be racing to make a speedy exit as soon as possible. He flops his suitcase over at the foot of his bed and unzips it, tosses a few necessities onto the chest of drawers, and runs out of things he’s willing to do. He flops down flat on the bed, closing his eyes and taking a steadying breath in. The smell of rosy laundry detergent itches at his nose. Ethan eases down beside him, the mattress dipping under his weight. Maelgwyn opens his eyes to see him looking at him, and his stomach does something funny. He can see the beginning of stubble growing back in on Ethan’s jaw. “Hey,” he says. “Hey yourself.”

Maelgwyn hums thoughtfully, trying to distract himself. “So. Was that really your mom?”

Ethan snorts. “Yeah. She's never celebrated Christmas in her life, but she'd be game to take pictures if you need. She gave me permission to pull the family reunion card.”

Despite their earlier successful con, Maelgwyn's stomach flips again at the implication of actually meeting Ethan's mother. "Oh," he says lightly, "so your whole family's like this?"

"It's congenital." 

Mael laughs softly. “When did you get into contact with her?"

Ethan scrunches up his face thoughtfully "Five years ago?” Maelgwyn snorts, shaking his head. He should’ve expected nothing less from Hitchcock. He rolls into Ethan, resting his head on his shoulder again. It’s becoming a familiar comfort. They lay there in companionable silence, the sounds of people moving and talking downstairs muffled by layers of flooring. Maelgwyn knows this solace will be fleeting, but until then, he luxuriates in this little bubble of comfort they’ve created. 

The two of them, comfortable together. It’s quite a concept. 

Maelgwyn realizes that in all of his strategizing and stressing about what his parents and friends would think, he had never quite stopped to wonder how he felt about the prospect of Ethan reciprocating his stupid little crush. Outwardly, Ethan is a slightly sinister mess—but the more time Maelgwyn spends with him, the more he’s starting to get to see beneath that, to a boy who cares deeply for his tightly knit circle despite his general disregard for the world at large. He makes Maelgwyn feel like he has someone on his side and at his back, like he’s someone worth spending time with and listening to. He’s spent so much of his life carefully considering someone else’s opinions, after all, weaving Edmund’s needs into his own so tightly that they couldn’t be extricated from his own. Maelgwyn might never describe him as kind, but he is, in his own way, loving.

If Maelgwyn stops to ask himself how he would feel about truly presenting Ethan as his boyfriend, the answer comes to the surface with surprising speed.

Maelgwyn raises his head and reaches up to touch his cheek. Ethan blinks at him and gives him that soft, real smile again, and Maelgwyn can't help it anymore. He leans in to kiss him.

He makes out with him like he's starving, hands running up his sides, mouth insistent and roaming. Ethan makes a noise of surprise and breathes in, and then all together he melts into Maelgwyn and pulls him in by the waist. This is new ground for Maelgwyn—he’s hardly ever been the one to initiate these things, and has spent so much time going without them entirely—but treading it together doesn’t feel as terrifying as it should. He sinks into soft contentment, his perception of the world around him dulled, all of his attention narrowed onto Ethan.

There's a burst of shocked laughter at the side of the room, and they jump apart, Maelgwyn's heart bursting with terror. Angelo is leaning in the doorway, smiling obnoxiously but politely looking at the floor. "Sorry to interrupt, lovebirds."

Maelgwyn puts a hand over his mouth as if he can hide the evidence of what he was just doing. Ethan struggles to his elbows and tries to fix his curls, clearing his throat. He’s breathing as if he was just running. “Just wanted to tell you Tristero’s here,” Angelo says, already beginning to retreat. “Dinner’s in ten.” 

“Oh,” Maelgwyn says, voice mortifyingly rough. “Okay.” 

They wait in stunned silence as Angelo retreats to the hallway and down the stairs. When they hear him muffling a laugh on the way down, they can’t help it. They burst into giggles themselves, Maelgwyn reaching out to squeeze Ethan’s arm. “We’re never fucking living that down,” he manages to say between wheezes. 

Ethan wordlessly presses his forehead to his shoulder, riding out the last of his giggles. When he raises his head, Maelgwyn unconsciously leans in a fraction, wanting to be kissed again. Ethan puts a hand on Maelgwyn's shoulder to interrupt, but the corner of his lips turn up reassuringly. "Later." He reaches out to tuck Maelgwyn’s hair back into place, tracing his fingertips down his cheek. “Okay.”

Maelgwyn nods, squeezing his wrist. A tiny flicker of hope lands in his chest, and he shields it like the first spark of a flame. “Okay.”

---

Later never comes. Maelgwyn is mad with longing all through the evening, but Samol insists they play board games and the Tristés bicker over a dozen different movies to watch, and bit by bit the time trickles away fruitlessly. By the time midnight rolls around, Ethan seems more interested in dozing on his shoulder than being kissed. Maelgwyn rests his head against his and feels so frustrated that he could cry. 

It’s always been difficult for him to admit to wanting something of his own, and even more difficult to believe that he could have it. By the time that they separate at night so that Maelgwyn can go sleep in ‘his’ bedroom, he’s thoroughly convinced himself that he whole thing had been a fluke, an imagined romance he’d created to distract and soothe himself. He falls asleep exhausted, and he wakes up miserable. 

All that Ethan does in the morning is cram down youtiao and bitch about his back hurting, and after breakfast their day is a rush to pack and hustle to the airport. Ethan is quiet and thoughtful as they move through the airport, unusually reticent to strike up conversation with the staff. As they loiter at their their gate, Ethan leaning up against a wall and trying not to fall asleep, Maelgwyn excuses himself and finds an ATM. When he returns, he holds out two fifty-dollar bills, feeling strangely defeated about it.

Ethan perks right up. “Thank you very much,” he says, snapping them up and jamming his hands in the pockets of his stoner hoodie. Maelgwyn grunts affirmatively and comes to stand beside him, folding his arms behind his back and scanning the crowd idly. Ethan bumps his shoulder with his, and he startles, having almost catastrophized himself into thinking that Ethan didn’t want anything to do with him anymore. “Hey,” Ethan says.

“Hey yourself.” Maelgwyn gives him a cautious look.

“So. Dinner for two, plus a few drinks. Maybe a box of donuts for good measure. Tends to come out to a hundred-dollar bill in this economy, no?”

Maelgwyn blinks at him, not quite following. “Yeah. Sure does.”

“ Maudit baptême, Mael. ” Ethan huffs out a laugh, snapping his gum. “I meant you and me. Dinner. Sounds good?”

Maelgwyn just keeps blinking at him, knowing he’s taking too long to answer but puzzling through what that could possibly mean. He’d really thought that at some point the politician’s blood in him would take hold and make these snap judgements easier. Ethan smiles at him patiently. “What? I can’t ask my fake boyfriend on a real date? Not after I’ve played tonsil hockey with him? Three times?”

The promise that Ethan had made to him—the one he’d buried under layers of self-sabotage—comes bubbling back up to the surface, shining bright. “Well,” Maelgwyn says, finding it in him to smile again, “when you put it like that, I guess it wouldn’t be fair to turn you down.”

He doesn’t quite know how to handle this wordless, rollicking transition between facade and truth, but if there’s anyone who seems happy to play in gray areas, it’s Ethan Hitchcock—and Maelgwyn doesn’t so much mind the idea of following him. When he drops his hand to find Ethan’s, he finds that it had already been there waiting for him.

[charlieknighte]

in media res

Miles Edgeworth & Dick Gumshoe

3,110 words

content warnings: implied off-screen gun violence, cop pov character (sorry)

Detective Gumshoe has been awake for sixteen hours straight. When he responds to a midnight noise complaint at Gourd Lake and finds Prosecutor Edgeworth holding a recently fired gun, drenched in lake water and demanding to be arrested—well, he has to genuinely worry that he may be hallucinating.

It’s been a long day. 

It seems like these graveyard shift patrols always fall to Detective Gumshoe, the least likely to protest and the most disposable in daytime investigations. He’s working overtime for the third time this week, and the battle to stay awake is a fierce fight. By the time he gets the call, he’s been awake for almost sixteen hours, and every bit of the piddling mental fortitude that he has left is being used to debate which dirt-cheap konbini he should stop at for a midnight meal when he finally gets to take a break. 

Unfortunately, there’s no time to reach a conclusion. There’s been a string of noise complaints around Gourd Lake, dispatch informs him. Shots fired, allegedly, but no one’s been able to confirm a disturbance. Could be teenagers playing with fireworks. Could be something far worse. He’s to scout around the lakeside, call for backup if necessary. He turns down his midnight talk radio to reply in affirmative, sighs deeply, changes lanes to turn off of the main road. 

It’s been a long night. He tries to keep a happy thought that he’ll be back in his car in thirty minutes’ time, confiscated fireworks in his glove compartment, his phone plotting a route to the nearest twenty-four hour store that sells Mr. Noodle.

At this time of night, there’s no need to turn the siren on. The small parking lot of the lake is dead empty, its gravel surface crunching loudly under his tires as he turns in. Even with his high beams on, the forest around the lot is dark in a way that LA’s light polluted streets never seem to be, and he has to squint and blink to adjust to the shadows. When he can finally make out shapes with reliability, he comes to the slow, dreadful realization that between the knee-high chunks of rock lining the end of the parking lot—presumably to discourage parkgoers from driving their cars directly into the lake—someone is standing at the edge of the gravel, eerily still. Looking directly at him.

Gumshoe has a sinking feeling that Mr. Noodle is no longer a priority tonight. 

He brings his squad car to a stop in the center of the lot, gripping his steering wheel, regretting every decision that wound him up in this B-movie horror protagonist scenario. The figure at the end of the lot doesn’t move. Gumshoe can’t stand the tension creeping into his shoulders anymore. He fishes his flashlight out of his glove compartment and opens his driver side door. He puts a hand on his holster as he steps out—more out of instinct than the belief that it’s necessary. He wants to stay optimistic here, despite the circumstances.

“LAPD!” he calls out as he walks the length of the lot. The air is humid and frigid to his Californian sensibilities, which is to say that it would be lightly cool to anyone else. “You alright, pal? You, uh—you call in the complaint?”

In response, the figure wordlessly tosses something into the gravel. It lands with a harsh noise. Before Gumshoe’s uneasiness can calcify into any real suspicion, they slowly raise their hands above their head. That wasn’t at all what he was expecting, but then again, nothing about this call has been. Fumbling, he turns on his flashlight and raises it, pointing it straight at the figure’s face.

It’s been a long night. That’s why he genuinely worries that he might be hallucinating when the beam of his flashlight illuminates Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth—drenched in water, bangs plastered to his face, shivering violently. He flinches visibly at the sudden light, blinking hard and grimacing.

In a panic, Gumshoe nearly considers clicking off the flashlight as if someone else will be standing there when he turns it back on, and the night will go back to normal. It makes sense for a moment, because this is a bad dream. It has to be.

No matter how hard he wishes it, the drowned ghost of Miles Edgeworth does not disappear. He looks as if he stepped straight out of a courtroom and into a lake, his cravat hanging limply at his neck, his shoulders hunched into the same woolen coat that Gumshoe saw him wearing as he left the office only hours earlier. Now that he's closer to him, Gumshoe can hear his breath, fast and sharp as a jackrabbit's. The blunt light reflected on his face makes his pale irises disappear almost entirely, turning his stare ghostly as his pupils contract. He takes a moment too long to react to Gumshoe’s presence, staring at him like he can see through him, but slowly his eyes focus on his face above the flashlight. His blank expression wrinkles. “Detective Gumshoe,” he says, distantly dismayed.

“Mr. Edgeworth,” Gumshoe says cautiously. His first instinct is to ask if he’s okay, to offer him his dry coat—but something holds him back. He’s trying very, very hard not to make any snap judgments, but dread is slowly and powerfully starting to seep into his stomach. “What are you… doing out here so late, sir?”

It’s a miserably stupid question, and Gumshoe does feel stupid, like he would be left standing and gaping if Edgeworth decided to take off in a sprint. Edgeworth doesn’t deign to answer him, looking somewhere in the general vicinity of Gumshoe’s face without meeting his eyes. Gumshoe tilts the light down to the gravel, hoping fervently to not find what he’s expecting. Deep down, he knows that he’s not going to be so lucky. A pistol lays in the gravel of the parking lot, wet black metal glinting dimly in the light. Still, he tries not to jump to conclusions, not about the gun, not about the dark, unidentifiable spatter at the cuff of Edgeworth’s pants. It could be mud. It could be anything. He slowly, unhappily pans the light back up to Edgeworth, who squints and blinks at the renewed assault of light but otherwise doesn’t move from his stiff, shaking position. Gumshoe tries to ask him something else, but everything he can think of dies in his mouth.

“Alright,” Edgeworth says finally, voice faint and shaking from the cold. “You took longer than you should have to arrive. I had a lot of time to think. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’ll be easier for everyone if you arrest me now.”

“Arrest you,” Gumshoe repeats. His mind is working more slowly than it should. He knows that there’s a very obvious connection to be made here, but—but he can’t bring himself to believe it.  “Why… why would I do that, sir?”

“On suspicion of murder,” Edgeworth says, not seeming any more perturbed about the idea than his baseline of distant, distraught shock. The brief panic and recognition that had flashed onto his face when he saw Gumshoe is far gone. Gumshoe’s heart sinks to the pit of his stomach like a stone. He’d hoped for fireworks, he remembers miserably. He really had.

“Murder? But no one’s been reported…” he begins to protest, and then thinks better than to contradict Miles Edgeworth of all people. 

“He will be, soon enough.” 

Gumshoe’s stomach turns at the thought of having to walk past this already nightmarish scene to find something worse. He wonders how long Edgeworth has been standing here, dripping wet in the cold, waiting for police to arrive at the scene. Since the call was put in, at least ten minutes. In reality, almost certainly longer than that. "But,” Gumshoe says, stammering, unable to stop himself from sounding completely childish in his panic, “but, but, but, you wouldn’t. You would never shoot anyone. I know you!”

He sees something shift in Edgeworth’s eerily blank expression, a hint of an emotion that he doesn’t have time to identify before it’s covered with tired contempt—an expression that Gumshoe knows well enough to identify in a second flat. “Thank you for the vote of confidence, detective. Maybe you can apply to be a character witness.” Despite the Edgeworth-isms coming out of his mouth, he doesn’t seem all there, like parsing Gumshoe’s appearance in front of him and coming up with biting things to say to him is a distant afterthought. A sudden shudder passes through him, his shoulders lurching up to his ears. “So are you going to arrest me anytime soon, or are we going to stand here until I die of hypothermia?” 

A trickle of sweat pours down Gumshoe's temple, causing him to realize that he’s in a cold sweat himself, shirt beginning to dampen. He can’t believe this. It simply isn’t registering as reality in his brain, or even as a possibility. “I… Sir… You didn't really do it, did you?”

Edgeworth shifts on the spot and finally breaks his uncomfortable stare, glancing at the gun. "No, I didn’t,” he says quietly, almost as if to himself. 

“So why are you—asking me to arrest you?” Gumshoe almost laughs it out. Of all of the situations he thought he’d be in tonight, his boss trying to persuade him to arrest him for murder didn’t even feature on the list. All of his training has flown out of his head. He almost starts to wonder if this is a nightmare again, but everything is far, far too coherent for it to be a dream, and he isn’t that lucky.

“I’m—I’m just—” Edgeworth shakes his head, his stunned calm receding as he starts to regain some lucidity. The experience of coming back to himself seems to distress him. "I'm only trying to save the investigation the time and effort of—of discovering that my fingerprints are on the murder weapon, and that I was undeniably involved in the… incident, and that the identity of the victim makes me uniquely suited to be a suspect." Beneath his bangs, Gumshoe can vaguely see him grimace, wry but not quite with humor, as if he'd find this funny if he were in less of a state. "If I didn't turn myself in, you'd bring me in soon enough, and I'd rather spare myself the paranoia. I’m the only suspect you have. I’m—I’m in an almost perfectly indefensible position. It’s impressive, if you think about it.”

“But that’s… insane. If you didn’t do it…” Gumshoe pans the light back down to the gun for a moment—the murder weapon, he reminds himself, future key evidence, to be bagged as soon as possible. It sits there perfectly innocuously. It occurs to Gumshoe, as much as he wishes it didn’t, that he can’t think of a single other person who would have taken Edgeworth’s claim that he isn’t a murderer at face value. Anyone else would find his deadpan rationality strange—incriminating, even. Gumshoe knows him far better than that. Edgeworth is in crisis mode, and he’s not going to emerge anytime soon. He angles the light back up and gets another hard flinch. "Who's the victim?" he asks, fearing the answer.

That gets him a typical Edgeworth-like sneer of disgust, at about one third of its usual power. "I’m not going to do everything for you."

“Sorry, sir,” Gumshoe says as a reflex, and then shakes his head in confusion. “I… why are you even telling me all this? Shouldn't you be, I dunno… running?"

Edgeworth looks him properly in the face for a split-second, aghast. "Firstly, I'm going to pretend that you didn't just say that to an active murder suspect.” Despite the fact that he’s still trembling, the force of his voice is starting to come back to him somewhat. Gumshoe has the urge to apologize again. “Secondly, we're in a forest. At midnight. Only one of us has a flashlight or a gun. Do the math.”

Gumshoe remembers the gun in his holster and nearly drops it into the gravel beside the other. "No, I... I wouldn't, I couldn't..." Panic is starting to rise into his lungs. He’s going to have to arrest him. He really is. “Don’t make me do this, Mr. Edgeworth,” he pleads. He’s too sleep-deprived to have any self-control left, and his eyes are getting misty.

Pleading doesn’t help his case even a little bit, and he shouldn’t have expected it to. Edgeworth watches him begin to snivel with mild revulsion. “Would you get yourself together?” he says stiffly, which is a rich sentence to hear from a man looks to be one unpleasant shock away from falling into a catatonic state and is begging to be arrested for a murder he didn’t commit. “You don’t have a choice, detective. It’s your job to apprehend the most likely suspect, and I am handing you probable cause on a silver platter. My relationship to you shouldn’t affect your professional judgment.”

“Of course it affects my judgment!” Gumshoe says, through real tears. “What are you even saying?” 

Edgeworth raises his voice above the sound of Gumshoe loudly snuffling and wiping his nose on his sleeve. “I’m saying that I have no interest in becoming a fugitive from the law. The only thing I plan to do is stand here until an officer places me under arrest." And then he does, water still dripping off of his raised arms even as they falter from fatigue. "That wasn't an invitation to wait until someone more competent gets here," he says when Gumshoe still hasn't made a move towards him. And then, when he still refuses to do anything but blubber into his sleeve, "Detective, if you refuse to arrest me, I will personally ensure that the remainder of your employment is short and miserable."

Gumshoe mops his face with his arm, draws up though his nose, and finally forces himself to move, clicking his flashlight off and tucking it in one of his enormous coat pockets. He takes his handcuffs out with shaking hands and takes slow, small steps across the parking lot to stand behind Edgeworth, who crosses his wrists behind his back without being asked. 

"Miles Edgeworth, you're under arrest on... on..." Gumshoe has a hard time spitting it out. "On suspicion of murder." He reluctantly clicks the cuffs into place. Edgeworth doesn’t struggle. He’s no longer panting, but his breathing comes in distant, sharp inhales. Before walking him to the car, Gumshoe takes a breath and asks, “What happened out here, sir?”

"You have to inform me of my rights." 

Gumshoe stares at the back of his head in flabbergasted silence. "You… you know them."

Edgeworth turns to glower up at him through his wet, stringy bangs. “Do you assume that a lot of people know their rights without being told, detective?” 

“No! No, no—”

"Are you aware that if I'm not read my Miranda rights, the prosecution legally won't be able to use any statement I make in questioning?”

“And you want them to?” Gumshoe says before he can think better of it. For the first time since Gumshoe stumbled upon him, Edgeworth puffs up to his full stature, full of indignance, and Gumshoe feels distinctly like a first-year patrol officer about to be subjected to verbal warfare for filing his report a week late. 

“Detective, I will get on that stand and the first words out of my mouth will be that you didn’t follow arrest protocol. You don’t know how much of a living hell I can—”

“You’re right, you’re right, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Gumshoe sighs and begins to haltingly recite, “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you. You have the right to an attorney. If you can’t afford one, one will be provided for you.” He feels more ridiculous with every sentence, particularly the conclusion considering who he’s talking to. Edgeworth watches him finish stumbling through his speech out of the corner of his eye. They both know he's gaining nothing from hearing it. Gumshoe almost expects him to launch into another lecture, but he simply remains silent when he's done, turning away from him and staring at the forest floor. The fury has leeched out of his body language, leaving him drooping again.

Gumshoe tries again: "What the hell happened—?"

"I'm not answering any questions without an attorney present,” Edgeworth says to the ground.

Gumshoe miserably admits that he’s been played for a fool and takes Edgeworth’s shoulder to walk him around to the back of the car. Edgeworth goes willingly, ducking his head automatically as he’s pushed into his seat. Gumshoe winces at the audible squelch of his coat as he sits down. He’s going to leak water all over the car—Gumshoe’s car—and someone—Gumshoe—is going to have to clean it up later. Gumshoe closes the door after him and blows out a frustrated breath. His tears are cooling on his face, and he tries his best to scrub them off with his sleeve before reluctantly sliding back into the driver’s seat. 

The moment he’s back in his car, the sheer absurdity of the situation sets in in full force. He expected fireworks. Instead, he’s going to have to file arrest paperwork for Miles Edgeworth. He knows that his first priority should be to radio in his report and call for forensics, but all he can do is sits there dumbly, staring through the windshield at the place where he was standing, as if he can will the shadowy figure from earlier back into existence and fashion them into someone else. Someone who would make more sense.

“Are you going to answer that?” Edgeworth asks. 

Gumshoe jumps at the realization that his police radio is alive and crackling with inquiries after his status. He glances in the rearview mirror to see Edgeworth slumped back with his head resting over the top of his seat, eyes closed. 

“I… I don’t know what I’m supposed to say, sir.” Edgeworth cracks his eyes open, his glare withering even through a dusty mirror. Gumshoe gestures helplessly, too overwhelmed with frustration to be intimidated for once. “Station, I arrested my boss for suspected murder. No, a body hasn’t been reported, but I dunno, he said there would be one. No, he says that it wasn’t him that killed ‘em. Do you see how that’s going to sound… a little crazy?”

“I don’t see how that’s my problem.” Edgeworth closes his eyes again. Gumshoe puts his hands on the steering wheel and bangs his head against it softly. 

"I hope for your precinct’s sake that you aren’t always this incompetent," Edgeworth says faintly. 

Gumshoe picks his head up miserably, clearing his throat and reaching towards the radio. "I try my best, sir."

[charlieknighte]

loose ends + loose lips

Calisto Yew & Byrne Faraday & Tyrell Badd

782 words

The Yatagarasu makes a toast to the past and the future. A submission to Yatagarasu Week ‘22 for the day 2 prompt ‘Disguise’.

It’s not that Calisto doesn’t like children, no matter how many times she’s used that as an excuse. Faraday’s kid is precocious-cute, smart and sneaky for her age. Takes after her dad. If the circumstances were different, she wouldn’t mind being Auntie Calisto. She’d teach her to pick pockets better, teach her where to kick an adult where it hurts if she ever needs to. She’s a bright kid–she has a good future, no matter if she follows in Faraday’s footsteps or not.

Not liking Kay isn’t the problem. It’s that she doesn’t like collateral damage.

But being the kid of one of her partners in crime, of course she’s always going to be underfoot–even now, as they gather at Faraday’s house in the evening to celebrate a recent successful heist. And because Calisto hasn’t helped Kay improve her pickpocketing technique, Faraday catches her sneaking a lollipop out of Badd’s coat pocket almost immediately. “Kay,” he admonishes, scooping her up by the armpits and swiftly standing up from his seat on the couch. She shrieks, still clenching her prize in one fist. Calisto pauses on her way back to get glasses from the kitchen and leans in the doorway, watching in amusement.

Kay tries to squirm out of his grip, pedaling her legs in the air. “Daddy! Not fair!”

“I don’t mind… if she wants one,” says Badd, a lollipop of his own in his mouth. He has his arms crossed and is slouched so deeply into the couch that it gives Calisto back problems just to look at him. He looks sour, but that’s just Badd.

“I know you don’t,” Faraday says, beginning to shake Kay like he’s trying to get coins out of a piggy bank. She yells indignantly. “But she doesn’t need the sugar this late, believe me. C’mon, Kay, give it up.”

“No!” Kay contorts herself, trying to bite him on the arm. He dodges skillfully.

Calisto snorts, pushing off of the doorway and coming to pluck the lollipop from Kay’s grip, three champagne flutes balanced between the fingers of her other hand. “God, you sound so old right now,” she tells Faraday. Free of excuses to be a bastard, he heaves Kay back down to the floor. She scurries away to hide behind the arm of the couch, peeking her eyes out to glare at them both. 

“Yeah, yeah, don’t remind me.” Faraday takes one of the flutes from Calisto and sits back down, reaching for their champagne bottle. “Anyway, you’re not the one who has to deal with her jumping on your bed at eleven at night.”

“Daddy,” Kay complains, like a grouchy little adult, “I’m right here. I can hear you.”

Byrne takes the opportune moment to pop the cork and catch the bottle’s sputter of foam in his glass. “Did anyone hear something?” he says serenely. “Just me?” 

Calisto resists the urge to half-affectionately call him an asshole and distributes the other glass to Badd. She sits on Faraday’s other side and lets him pour her a glass. Badd slumps forward to accept a drink, too. “Kay… not getting anything?” he mutters.

Faraday gives him a look. “What kind of father do you think I–”

“Meant a juice. Or something.”

“Sugar, Tyrell, juice has sugar like you wouldn’t believe.”

Kay kicks the couch and groans dramatically. Calisto cackles. “You’re so boring! What are we toasting to?”

“Right,” says Byrne, raising his glass. “To the fall of the Matsui company.”

Remembering the heist has an immediate sobering effect. Calisto’s laugh had been genuine, but what’s left of it dies in her mouth. They had contacts at that company–not the Yatagarasu. She’s dreading her next report back to the ring. 

“To the Yatagarasu… and to justice,” Badd rumbles, raising his glass next to Byrne’s. 

They’re going to tell her she’s getting too comfortable, too friendly. If you keep going like this, they’ll remind her, one day you’re going to fuck up. You’re going to slip and let them too close, and you’re not wriggling your way out of cleanup duty. Remember that. Remember where your allegiances lie when you take off Calisto Yew’s face.

Calisto catches a look of Kay, chin now resting on the arm of the couch, looking up at the glasses with awe. The gears in her head are practically visible as they turn, trying to comprehend the delights they could possibly contain and how she could manage to steal one to find out. Calisto tears her eyes away and finally raises her glass. “To Cece,” she says.

Faraday tips his head. “To family, here or otherwise.”

Calisto clinks her glass to her dead fake sister in silence, and downs her drink quickly.

[charlieknighte]

presidential alert: the girls are fightinggg

(not really krisnix but whatever i’m not your dad)

640 words

content warnings: the vaguest of murder threats

Kristoph Gavin and Phoenix Wright dine together often. Gavin and Wright dine together so often, in fact, that Gavin is starting to think he may never be able to look at a beet without feeling murderous ever again.

“I already ordered your favorite,” Phoenix says. Kristoph’s ‘favorite’ is a bowl of cold, pureed borscht that skips the sour cream and any of the other toppings that could possibly save it from being anything  but bitter slop. Phoenix had ordered it for him without asking the first time he dined here, and he hasn’t been able to maneuver him out of the habit since. It had been hardly bearable the first few times, and it only gets worse the more Kristoph has to stomach it. He tries to force his smile out of its frozen grimace and back into something more plausible.

“How kind of you,” he says through gritted teeth, sinking into the dusty, concerningly lumpy plush seat of Phoenix’s booth and shooting a scathing glance at the bowl and utensils already waiting for him. “Will you be dining as well?”

“No, excuse me. I already ate.” Phoenix’s gaze was sleepy moments ago, but it suddenly bears down on him like a hawk’s. “But please. Go ahead.”

No escape, then. Feeling as if every muscle in his arm is protesting, Kristoph slips his spoon into the soup and raises it to his mouth. As grainy, tart, and acidic as it’s ever been. He tries not to gag visibly. “So. I’m sure you’ve heard that Prosecutor Edgeworth is in town,” he says, trying to distract his mind from fully processing the flavor.

Phoenix snorts, checking his nails as if they’re going to get any less misshapen. “You think he wouldn’t make sure I heard about it?”

“No, you’re right, of course. I only meant to inform you that I met him properly for the first time the other afternoon.”

“Oh, yeah? How’d that go?”

“I was dropping off one of Klavier’s files, which he’d left with me on a weekend visit. I thought it would be a good opportunity to introduce myself.” He’d been prepared, in truth, for a war waged through a thick veneer of politeness, but Prosecutor Edgeworth had stared at him with unsubtle outrage and dead silence throughout the entire one-sided conversation that Kristoph falteringly tried to maintain–except to tersely snap thank you very much as he snatched the file from his hand, sounding like he would have loved to rip his arm off along with it. It had been, in truth, quite amusing to have his expectations so subverted. “He wasn’t particularly hospitable, unfortunately.”

Phoenix snorts again, even louder. He doesn’t seem one bit surprised or bothered at how obvious it is that Edgeworth knows. One more card he’s willing to play face-up in their little game. “Yeah, well. Don’t take it personally. He has a pretty low opinion of defense attorneys.”

“Not all of them.”

Phoenix looks up from his nails to give him a thin-lipped smile. Unamused, but not threatened. He’s come a long way from the days when the mere mention of his loved ones would make him freeze up. “Mm. How’s your borscht?”

Kristoph remembers the borscht with dread. The taste of his first spoonful hasn’t left his mouth. “As delightful as always.” Which is to say, not at all. Under Phoenix’s watchful eye, he reluctantly eats another spoonful, suppressing his gag reflex and trying not to wrinkle his nose. 

“Good to hear, good to hear. We ran out of take-out containers, by the way, so I hope you can finish that all in one sitting.”

“Mhhrg,” says Kristoph inelegantly through a mouthful of beet sludge, caught off guard for the first time all day.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t want to be rude,” Phoenix says, one corner of his smile twitching, which Kristoph has come to know is a sign of him suppressing laughter. It occurs to him that he is never going to be able to eat another beet-centric dish without the Pavlovian urge to vividly plan Phoenix Wright’s murder.

[charlieknighte]

phoenix wright embarrasses himself at the function

Phoenix Wright/Miles Edgeworth + past Shi-Long Lang/Miles Edgeworth + the intricate rituals of Phoenix Wright/Shi-Long Lang

2,120 words

Was Edgeworth worried about his deeply contentious and overly protective husband meeting his one and only ex at a formal function? Yes. Was it a complete and utter disaster? Absolutely. Was it due to the reasons he expected? God, no.

“I’m just saying that he sounds like kind of an asshole,” Phoenix says as they file into the event venue with the rest of the crowd.

“I don’t disagree,” Edgeworth says, taking his arm to pull him closer so that they can continue their conversation amidst the throngs of people talking. “I’m only asking you to be polite if you must speak to him.” Phoenix grumbles. “Phoenix.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ll try.” 

“Please don’t overcompensate for the time I played a hand in putting your ex in jail.”

Phoenix snorts. “Oh my god, shut up. It was barely a hand.” Though Edgeworth still doesn’t completely trust him to not begin white-knighting the moment he runs into Lang, he leaves it alone. Phoenix scans the room as they step inside, sizing up the crowd with much more readiness than Edgeworth, who would much rather crawl into a bathroom and wait for the whole thing to be over. “Welp,” Phoenix says brightly, “I’m gonna go make the rounds.”

“You’re insane,” Edgeworth says, as a compliment. “I’ll be at the buffet.” He lets Phoenix kiss him on the cheek without his usual we are in public, Phoenix, Phoenix, not now  tirade just this once, and watches him slip off into the crowd.

About twenty minutes later, as he is stacking appetizers on his plate and balancing a glass of champagne, he becomes aware of a malicious presence hovering behind him. No, malicious isn’t quite the right term. Vicious, perhaps. He turns slowly with his precariously piled plate of spring rolls and spanakopita wedges, and makes a great show of arcing his gaze down at Franziska von Karma. She’s wearing tall boots and a navy blazer buttoned closed, which reveals her true nature as nothing more than a very expensively dressed equestrian.

“Franziska,” he says courteously. “Going riding after this?”

She wholly ignores the dig. “Are you planning on telling your husband to stop being a little tart anytime soon, or will I have to club him to death with a vase at some point this evening? I’ve already picked the vase.”

Because the bulk of Edgeworth’s social energy has been put into looking like an irascible cunt so no one will speak to him, he has nothing more intelligent to say than, “What.”

Franziska, who doesn’t need to put any conscious effort whatsoever into making that expression, points into the crowd. Edgeworth seeks out the blue of Phoenix’s suit and has to stare at it for a long time before he fully accepts that the situation before him is real. Phoenix is holding a glass of champagne (unfortunate), engaged in conversation with Agent Shi-Long Lang (horrific), and he is leaning all his weight on one leg and giggling like a girl at a frat party (downright agonizing). Lang, who is at the very least wearing a two-piece suit and not some sort of insane fur coat for once, looks very much like a wolf batting around a little woodland creature for amusement (Edgeworth despises himself at once for this mental turn of phrase). A gaggle of suited interpol agents stand behind him in silent embarrassment, gazes averted. Phoenix giggles again. It’s audible across the room.

“Oh, god,” Edgeworth says slowly, feeling around the table for his drink. When he finds it, he drains it in one quick pull.

“I do not protest when you’re given a plus one for this event.” Franziska says, mostly speaking to herself, “I do not protest when you inevitably use it on that oaf. I do not even caution him as many times as I should to not make a fool of himself in public–and now I’m watching a repeat performance of one of the most deeply embarrassing men in my life making an ass of himself in front of my colleagues.” She raises her voice to address Edgeworth, whom she apparently considers to be one of the deeply embarrassing men in her life. “Do you not feel threatened by this?”

Edgeworth has never felt threatened by anyone expressing interest in Phoenix, and he never will. Phoenix has no game, for one, and Edgeworth has woken up to him watching him in his sleep enough times to be assured that he’s never going to be rid of the freak. No: the prevailing emotion he feels as he watches Phoenix flirt with Lang like he’s trying to get him to buy him shots isn’t jealousy. It’s secondhand embarrassment.

“Threatened, no,” he mutters to Franziska. “But the thought that I never want to be seen in public with him again has crossed my mind.”

Both of them watch in horror as Lang removes his suit jacket and presents his arm. Phoenix leans in and squeezes his bicep, laughing at an even more sickeningly high pitch. “Oh,” Edgeworth and Franziska say together in varying degrees of dismay and disgust, like audience members watching a particularly grisly knockout at a boxing match.

“I can’t bear to watch anymore,” Franziska says, turning around to stare directly at the wall, pretending to admire a horrible oil painting of a landscape and doing a piss-poor job of it. “Are you just going to stand there?”

Edgeworth reluctantly un-freezes from the stiff spectator’s pose he’d assumed. “I’ll go get him,” he says, with the grim air of someone about to drag their compatriot out of live combat. He puts down his glass on the edge of the snack table, but there’s no way in hell he’s abandoning his hors d'oeuvres. He’s going to need them.

He makes his way through the crowd, some of which parts for him willingly when they see the irascible cunt expression that he is no longer having to take pains to put on. Eventually, he reaches the gaggle of Interpol agents and threads himself into their number. “Phoenix,” he says at a higher volume than he needs to.

Phoenix startles and slowly turns to him with the look of a guilty dog. He doesn’t look particularly drunk save for the flush high in his cheeks. Edgeworth goes to stand beside him, putting a hand on his back in what he hopes looks like a show of spousal affection to anyone who doesn’t see him grabbing the back of Phoenix’s jacket in a death grip. Phoenix makes a minute, stifled choking noise and goes very still.

“Agent Lang,” Edgeworth says, stiffly but professionally.

“Heyy,” Lang drawls, highly unprofessionally. With his suit jacket slung over one shoulder, it’s visible that he’s undone about four more buttons of his shirt than Edgeworth thinks is acceptable to wear in public, which would still be two too many buttons to the average person. His shirt is silk and patterned horrifically with gold chains, and Edgeworth stews at the fact that he can pull it off without looking as if he’s about to leave the function to go blow all of his savings in slot machines. He shakes himself into the realization that he’s spent more than enough time starting at Lang’s cleavage and raises his gaze. He’s dismayed to see that Lang is grinning in that familiar way that says you’ve embarrassed yourself horribly and I’m going to tell everyone I know about it. He’s not sure which one of them he’s pointing it at.

“Would you. Please. Excuse us,” Edgeworth says through gritted teeth. Phoenix gives Lang the big, sheepish grin of a man who knows that his bad back is saving him from having to sleep on the couch tonight.

“Sure,” says Lang, with the easy smile of a man who is not afraid of Miles Edgeworth and knows that this will have no consequences on him whatsoever.

Hefting Phoenix like he’s carrying a disobedient dog by the scruff of its neck, Edgeworth begins to walk him away at an unreasonable pace. “He was nice,” Phoenix says in a rush, stumbling after him. Edgeworth decides that it’s best to ignore him, lest he get on his nerves enough to cause him to scream in the middle of a crowded venue. Somehow managing to balance his plate as they weave through the crowd, he tugs Phoenix behind the corner that leads to the bathrooms. He restrains himself from shaking him by the back of his jacket and reluctantly uncurls his fingers from its fabric.

“Franziska came to tell me that you were acting like a whore,” he informs him curtly.

Phoenix, who had been straightening his jacket and dusting himself off, stops and blinks up at him with innocent surprise that Edgeworth has trouble believing is genuine. “For–for talking to Lang? Did she really use the word ‘whore’, or was it ‘harlot’? Be honest.”

“The exact term she used was ‘little tart’.”

“Eh heh heh heh.” Edgeworth hates it when Phoenix goes eh heh heh heh, even if it’s now lucky to rank higher on the list of Phoenix’s laughs than the bimbo giggle he unleashed tonight. “Of course it was,” he says, grinning with more good humor than he deserves to have at this moment.

“So this is funny to you,” Edgeworth says, crossing his arms as best he can with his plate of appetizers, which he still staunchly refuses to leave on some table for the vultures of the event to pick at.

The smile immediately drops off of Phoenix’s face, replaced with a mockery of a studiously serious expression, lips pressed together and brows scrunched. “Nooooo. I’m sorry.”

“Are you really sorry? Because I’m going to be very sure that you are by the end of this conversation. First of all, why are you drinking? Second of all, what are you drinking and where did you get it? Because I would sure as hell like to wipe that entire interaction from my conscious mind by the time the night is though.”

“Um,” Phoenix says, very quickly turning small and embarrassed. He profers his glass like a peace offering, “It’s sparkling apple juice. I got it from the kids’ table.”

That is possibly the worst answer he could’ve given him. Edgeworth gives him a look, takes the glass and sniffs its contents: artificial apple flavor and an obscene amount of sugar. “My god,” he says, handing it back, recontextualizing the flush of Phoenix’s cheeks from drunken glow to a deeply embarrassing way for a thirty-five year old man to react to being flirted with. “You aren’t even drunk. You were being a tart.”

“Eh heh heh heh.” 

“Will you please be serious?” Now that he’s reasonably assured that Phoenix isn’t drunk–only an idiot–he figures that he can handle a harsher dose of reality. “Does it really take you two minutes of looking at a man’s tits to change your opinion of him from being ‘kind of an asshole’ to–whatever that was?”

“I mean, isn’t that basically how we started dating?” Phoenix ventures sheepishly, a joke that Edgeworth does not outwardly allow to land.

“You’re skipping over some very vital context. Don’t change the subject. You were embarrassing yourself. Franziska was about two minutes from killing you, and she’d already picked the murder weapon.” He raises his voice slightly, hopefully not enough for the people milling about outside the hallway to hear. “Do I have to remind you who you were embarrassing yourself in front–”

“I know, I know, I know! I’m sorry. I really am, I promise.” Phoenix smooths his hair back, beginning to look truly nervous. “I swear I wasn’t–I didn’t mean to get all–he just–he was really–” 

“I know,” Edgeworth admits begrudgingly. “He’s really very…”

“He’s, um… He’s just… damn.”

“Very much so.”

“Mm.” The flush is back in Phoenix’s cheeks.

Edgeworth releases the bulk of his hostility, shoulders dropping, sighing deeply. “Listen… I’m not upset with you. Lang is very… forward, and to say that he was wearing a shirt tonight would be an overstatement. I understand the urge to…” He waves generally. “That is to say, I know what it’s like for him to be the first man to ever pay attention to you. Well… second for you, I suppose.”

They share a silent look of solidarity, which quickly turns awkward as they both remember which of the three people in this situation have and haven’t known each other biblically. 

“I’m so, so sorry,” Phoenix says, deeply horrified, raising a fist to his mouth. Edgeworth does believe that he means it this time. 

Edgeworth unfolds his arms to gently touch his shoulder. “I’m not upset,” he reminds him. “I know you didn't mean anything by it. It’s only that I’m embarrassed to be seen with you after all that. If you’re going to ogle him, can you at least be less mortifying about it?”

The hopeful little look that was building on Phoenix’s face dies. “Oh, okay. Thanks.”

[charlieknighte]

burned, about to burn, still on fire

Phoenix Wright/Miles Edgeworth

Epistolary Fic - Post AA1 - Character Study - Dream Sequence - Pre-Relationship Unnecessary Feelings™

9,965 words

content warnings: discussion of attempted suicide/suicidal thoughts, grieving

In a hastily rented cottage on the coast of France, Miles Edgeworth drafts letters from beyond the grave, trying to articulate the muddled thoughts that led to a rashly written note and a sudden disappearing act. On the other side of the sea, Phoenix Wright lapses into his old habit of writing letters to a childhood friend who isn’t listening, trying to piece together theories with minimal evidence, as is his specialty. Neither aware of each other’s struggle to understand the events that forced them apart—both entirely out of reach.

(This is a playthrough of a hack of a hack of dancynrew’s letter writing TTRPG, Beyond Reach. Play proceeds through letters written by each player, interrupted by a collaborative dream sequence halfway through the playthrough. Each player is unable to read the others’s letters until the end of the game. Edgeworth was played by Stars (starsshine77), and Phoenix was played by Charlie (fixationstn).)

DESCRIBE YOURSELVES ONLY BY THE DETAILS A LOVED ONE WOULD RECOGNIZE YOU BY.

You never really get past the badly tailored off-the-rack suit or the hastily slicked-back hair—you never did stop making snide comments, that’s for sure—but once you grow accustomed enough to start seeing past them, the first thing you can identify me by is the purpose I put into every movement, as if there’s some internal engine or sun-like force bringing fire to every step. After that come the details: cheek dimples that eagerly appear at any twist of my lips, the determined scrunch of my eyebrows, the way my badge is the only polished thing about me. From the moment I enter your life to the last moments we have together, there is the unwavering, ever-present impression that no matter how heavy of a burden I'm carrying, I will always be willing to help shoulder yours, for better or for worse.

~~~

I am a collection of angles and edges - sharp and cold things put together to form the facsimile of perfection. Every stitch of impeccable tailoring, every overly styled hair, the hardness of every leveling glare - this is my armor; you’re meant to roll off of it like water. An unforgiving landscape, an unclimbable slope, but that never stopped you, now did it? What did you see in these eyes, my father’s eyes? A moment of weakness - the point at which I faltered - or was it something more? Did you see that gnawing hunger underneath my skin for something I’ve never tasted, something more? Did you see the white-knuckle grip I had on an ugly lie, or when I had to let it go for an even uglier truth? All I see is a man on the run. Towards something, or away from something else - tell me if you find out which.

DESCRIBE WHAT HAPPENED THE LAST TIME YOU SAW EACH OTHER.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the last time we saw each other, I was a wreck. I was cold, I was crumbling, I was hurt.

(He lied to me, they both did, everyone is lying to me, how can I possibly be trusted to know the truth?)

I didn’t hide it well; although, perhaps, you could see the wound but not the true depth of it. Perhaps I covered my tracks better than I thought. Or perhaps you looked across the courtroom and saw me crashing, burning, again, and decided that’s all I would ever be capable of. No, that’s not fair to you - No, you would have tried to pull me out of the wreckage, recklessly determined to the last. And I - couldn’t let that happen. I just couldn’t.

I wanted more than to be pulled out of the car crash of myself.

I can’t hope that you’ll understand, but when all is quiet I pray you can forgive me.

~~~

Hi, Miles.

Do you remember those letters I wrote you? You never did tell me if you read them. I don’t know if I even expected you to. I think at some point they stopped being about trying to get in touch with you and became more of… a place to tuck away my loneliness and grief so no one would have to see it. Nobody really got why I was so torn up after you left, and I didn’t want to share that feeling with them if they wouldn’t understand it. Thinking back on it, I don’t think I was really old enough to understand it either.

So, here I am again. Older and still not understanding.

It’s been a couple of weeks since Gumshoe let me into your office to look around. Officially, I was allowed in as a consultant to see if my familiarity with you would help me turn up anything the police had missed (it didn’t, of course, you wouldn’t make it that easy for me.) Maybe Gumshoe honestly was looking to me for answers, but really, I think he just wanted to give me a chance to be in a room that belonged to you one last time. As if one room would be enough to capture the entire string of tragedies that brought you to do this—if it was up to me, every place you’d ever stood in or walked through would be taped up. I already feel like all I’ll ever see in them is a crime scene.

I haven’t been able to go back to my own office either, not since seeing yours like that. There’s something nearly grotesque in the similarity between them, in the way I left things half-finished like I died along with you, left a spirit stuck walking the places where I once lived. Looking at dirty coffee cups left from a friend’s visit, happy clients’ past cases tucked away on the shelves, a pinned-up paper with the number for a dinky phone booth scribbled in pink gel pen. It makes me feel stuck between worlds, half-remembering how good life used to be but unable to pierce the veil to get back to it. Maybe a call to a spirit medium wouldn’t be such a bad idea, if I could find it in myself to go back for her number one day.

(I did take Charley home, though. I’m not a monster.)

You must have made some arrangement for all the things you left behind, maybe a will. I shouldn’t be so angry that I wasn’t a part of it. I know we’re not family per se, but I thought I meant something to you. I can’t help but be hurt that after everything, after how much you meant to me—after everything I did to claw my way back to you, after all we’ve gone through together—that a single document strikes it from the record, makes it all add up to nothing. Maybe it’s fitting, in some horrible way, that the last way you could hurt me was through the letter of the law.

I just wish I could’ve known if you kept my letters.

Your friend,

Phoenix

Phoenix Wright has stopped taking clients. If one were frustrated enough by his closed door and dogged enough to peek through the window of his law office, they would find its contents abandoned mid-use, left strewn about as if he had stepped out only for a moment—but he hasn’t been back in weeks.

~~~

[Unsent] (no subject)

Message body:

Wright-

    There are a million and one apologies and explanations I owe you, I know- things I could say and should be saying- but as I draft this letter I find myself bereft, almost, of the very words.

    Which is quite a long-winded way of saying that I don’t know what to say. 

    Things have been- difficult, to put it mildly. Sometimes the simplest tasks seem far beyond my capability; sometimes I look back at things I know I’ve done, countless times, in the past, and can’t fathom how I managed them. Whoever it was who did those things was a stranger, and yet, whoever I am now is a stranger, too.

    I’m sure, by now, you’ve inferred what I meant to do. What my intentions were in leaving. I was- straight-forward, to the point, in my note. I wanted there to be no doubt. I didn’t want to leave a mess of half-formed thoughts or apologies. In fact, and I hope this doesn‘t upset you to hear, but it is the truth- I had no intention of leaving a body. I wanted no investigation, no loose ends- no funeral and no gravestone. I wanted a clean break. At the time it seemed like the kindest option for everyone, myself included. I wanted to step gently out of this plane and leave no trace behind, no evidence to substantiate that the twisted creature I had become had ever existed. The end, and the means to that end, were so clear to me.

    Now, nothing seems clear to me at all.

    Obviously, my plans have- changed, somewhat. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say I have no plans. I’ve left, albeit not in the way I intended, so don’t rush out to look for me when you receive this- I’m overseas and I have no intentions of returning. Not as I am now. Not as someone who can barely summon the energy or motivation to get out of bed, to bathe myself, to- well, I’ll spare you the messy details.

    I will admit I feel- better, here. I’ve found a place to stay for the interim (the interim of what, for what length of time, I can’t say, nor can I tell you even what country I’m in - I fear you’ll do something rash, as you’re prone to). It’s quite the change from my apartment in Los Angeles, which I think is a good thing- towards my final days there it felt like the walls were closing in on me, as if a stranger lived there, as if for all the time I had spent there I had left no lasting impression on it at all. Just a passing ghost in the world of the living. I realized I had felt that way for quite awhile. I’m not sure for how long.

    I don’t feel that way here, not quite. As it is a rental, the sense of impermanence lingers, but it doesn’t bother me as much. It’s comforting, in a way, to know that should the air start feeling as stale here as it did back home, I could pick up and go elsewhere and leave nothing at all behind. I fear I can’t say the same for Los Angeles. But the air isn’t as stale here- I feel safe telling you that I can see the sea from my window, that I can hear the powerful rush of it as I lay in bed at night, feigning sleep that sometimes comes and sometimes doesn’t. Aside from the sea it is quiet, here. Lonely, one might say, but being alone here is less isolating, less personal. On days that I can feel, it’s comforting. Peaceful. 

    I didn’t start this letter with the intention of telling you this. I didn’t want to speak about myself. The uncharitable side of me (you’ll joke that you didn’t know I had a charitable side, I’m sure) argues that you know far too much about me as it is. If that’s true, you probably know more about me than I do, currently. And yet I know so very little about you, as you are now. Memories of you as a child, I can summon when the mood strikes me, but now- the only memories I have of you are in court, and I can hardly bear to think of the place at the moment. Still, I can’t help but picture you- shining despite that horrid suit, brave and true, striking to the heart of everything and prying out the truth. You certainly pried it out of me. I will never be able to thank you enough, for that. I wasn’t strong enough to be saved, that much is true, but it isn’t your fault that without the buttress of my false convictions I collapsed into rubble. That’s no one’s fault but mine.

    I’m not making any sense. I’ll delete some of this before I send it. You shouldn’t have to bear knowing yet more ugly truths about me. It’s unfair to you. 

To the point of this correspondence, I heard- and it doesn’t matter how- that you’ve stopped taking clients, and that concerns me, Wright. I’m not arrogant enough to assume that it’s because of my- absence, although I fear that might be the case. You weren’t meant to take this personally. No, I shouldn’t say that. I’ll strike that out before I send this. Wright- Phoenix, part of the reason I felt confident enough to leave is knowing that you’d still be there, shining a light into the darkness, digging up the misdeeds of our court system. Saving the innocent. You were born to do it, I see that now. I can only hope you’ll meet prosecutors who are true and noble, who will aid you in your mission rather than attempt to bring you to your knees, to humiliate you and cut you down, in a meaningless play for worthless pride and glory.

I’m sorry, Wright. I’m just sorry.

I’m 

you’re , this is, I;m really sorry, I couldnt do it anymore I dont know what to do it at all and you just deserve 

     [Draft auto-saved at 04:38am]

 The High Prosecutor’s office is completely untouched. If one - motivated by whatever internal force, be it grief, or reverence, or morbid curiosity - took the time to slip up the stairs in the Prosecutor’s Building, if one knew a detective who had the key, they would find everything exactly the way Miles Edgeworth left it, down to the unfinished tea slowly staining the inside of cup on the desk, the surface collecting dust and putting off an odor. Everything untouched - except for the note that was once placed in the center of the desk, now bagged and locked away in an evidence locker to be slowly forgotten. And yet the relic of his existence remains.

��~~~

 Hi again, Miles.

 So. I did call Maya after all. I put it off for a long time, because I didn’t want to bother her with my sadsack shit when she’s finally in what I think is a good place, but—I started to get this horrible feeling about how two people in my life had left behind notes and vanished, and I knew it was unreasonable but I couldn’t shake it, and—anyway.

If I started to describe how happy we were to hear from each other, I’d fill the whole page and have no room left to write to you. She sounds good. Happy, even. I don’t know how much of that was her putting on a brave face for me, but at least she’s home and being taken care of, and no one’s trying to kill her or accuse her of murder That’s all we can really ask for, right?

We talked a lot about Mia. About how horrible and abrupt and final her death was, and how many things it changed, and how death stings even for someone who deals so much with the afterlife. Even knowing you might still be able speak with those who have passed on, a moment of connection isn’t enough to replace the richness of an entire existence. It still hurts to see the ones you love die.

I started asking Maya about her mom without meaning to. She’s been gone for more than fifteen years now, and at twenty she’ll be declared lost for good. Her aunt has banned anyone from trying to channel her until then (god, what a witch.) Maya’s good mood finally faltered when she told me that she doesn’t know what to believe about her disappearance. That it would almost be easier to deal with the knowledge of her death than the thought of her up and running away, leaving her children behind to an uncertain future. I… couldn’t help agreeing.

I desperately, desperately wish that Maya didn’t need to be so wise on this particular subject, but it was comforting to hear that even for someone who can touch death directly, there is no magic cure-all to grief. There’s no perfect moment of catharsis or straightforward path to processing loss. Sometimes there’s no way to even process it at all. It just happens, and we have to learn to live with it.

It still doesn’t feel like you’re gone, Miles. I thought that at some point it would. Instead I feel like the horrible truth of what happened is hanging right in front of me, and I’m craning my head over it to see where you went and when you’ll come back. We already spent so much time apart from each other, and through all that time I never stopped thinking of you with fondness and love. I don’t think I’ll be able to stop now, either, no matter how shaken up and upset I might be. To fully comprehend the idea of having lost you—if I’ll ever be able to—it might take me twenty years, too

I guess I wasn’t holding it together as well as I thought I was, because Maya started asking if I was alright, if I needed to talk about Mia again. Oh my god, Miles… I couldn’t tell her. Maya has lost so many people. She’s eighteen, and she already has so much grief to deal with that she’ll never be finished sorting through it all in her lifetime. I physically couldn’t bring myself to give her one more person to mourn for.

I can sit here beating the shit out of myself for it all I want, but that doesn’t change what I did in the moment. I lied to her. I lied that talking about Mia had brought up some old shit, but that everything was fine. That I would be okay. And then we said goodbye and I hung up. Just like that.

It was—a really nice call. I’m glad I talked to her.

(Man, I’m the biggest piece of shit alive.)

 Your friend,

Phoenix

 Phoenix only leaves the house on a handful of occasions during the month that passes. On one occasion, he takes advantage of Detective Gumshoe’s offer to help him with anything he needs and asks to be driven out to the only phonebooth in town that makes long-distance calls. He is quiet and unfocused on the drive out, but for a few moments during the lengthy call that he takes, his laugh is loud enough to be softly heard outside of the booth. Once he’s back in the car, though, his smile disappears. He stares through the windshield like he’s seeking something, eyebrows scrunched together and mouth set grimly. He remembers to thank Gumshoe for the ride before he shuts himself back in his apartment, but just barely.

 ~~~

 [Unsent] (no subject)

Message body:

Wright- 

    This isn’t how things were supposed to go. 

    Do you understand that? It’s laughably obvious and yet I fear that you aren’t wrapping your mind around it. Let me spell it out for you- I’ll use small words that even you can’t misunderstand- You. Ruined. Everything. 

    Doesn’t that sound horrible? Hideously ungrateful? Cruel and selfish? Good. Those are all the qualities I have left to my name. I may as well hold onto them. 

    I thought, before, that you had ‘changed’ everything, or rather you had brought to light all the ugly truth that was already there. Truth and justice! Everything we’re supposed to stand for! Isn’t it swell, even if it comes at the cost of everything about me? My entire life, as paltry and empty and pathetic as it was? Sure I was - I am - cruel and dishonest and ruthless, a dirty cheat and a liar, a soulless prideful monster- but I could have lived like that. I could have. I could have lived with that, Phoenix Wright, and maybe that will disgust you to hear but you love the fucking truth so much, you may as well hear it. I could have lived with what I was, vicious and hollow as I was- but that just wouldn’t do for you, would it? Doesn’t quite fit nicely into your burgeoning hero complex, does it?

No, you had to come along and- muck everything up. Expose me. Confuse me. Hand me my life back. And for what? What life? The last bit of family I had will never speak to me again, not after you put von Karma behind bars. I have no friends, regardless of what Detective Gumshoe believes, hapless fucking fool that he is. No pets - not even a houseplant. No hobbies, no interests. And now I don’t even have my reputation, my career, my dignity. You’ve taken it all from me. Ripped back all the layers trying to find whatever imaginary person you thought was hiding underneath. How does it feel, to know that underneath all that, there’s absolutely fucking no one? Nothing to save. Congratulations on your victory, Mr. Wright. You’ve beaten me, completely and soundly. 

    And in the midst of all that, you have the audacity to behave like you’re mourning me? After I gave you the courtesy of being rid of me completely? I’m no longer your concern, Wright. I’m not your - your fucking project, your little bird with a broken wing you can nurse back to health. I’m gone. I’m dead. I’ve cut myself neatly out of the story of your life- the least you could do for me, now, is let me go quietly.

    Why can’t I just go quietly? Goddamnit, Wright, what am I still holding on for?

    I guess, when it comes down to it, I’m a coward. I’m just too afraid of learning what comes next. Where does a soul like mine pass into, after all this? 

           Not to the same place as my father’s. That I know for sure. 

    This is what you worked so hard to save, Phoenix. I hope you come to understand that- that I was beyond saving from the moment you laid eyes on me again. I’ve been dead for fifteen years. It’s funny, almost- all this talk of spirit mediums and you never knew that you yourself were conversing with a ghost.

    I’m angry with you, Wright. I am. I was. I was when I started writing this and now I’m just tired. I’m just fucking tired.

     [Draft auto-saved at 05:14pm]

     [Are you sure you want to delete this draft?]

    [Yes] [No]

 There’s a basket of lilies rotting on the doorstep of a penthouse apartment in Los Angeles. Whatever card, whatever impersonal, perfunctory message that accompanied them upon delivery, is long gone. It’s a miracle that the landlord hasn’t thrown them out yet, or maybe he’s just afraid to draw the ire of an unfriendly ghost. Little does he know that Miles Edgeworth’s spirit isn’t here - it’s haunting the whole damn city. The apartment door is locked, the rent paid out for the next sixteen months. There might be a spare key, and there might not be - in any case, Detective Gumshoe, despite his offers of help and support, has grown suddenly and inexplicably distant. The door stays shut. The flowers remain.

 ~~~

 INTERMISSION

 ~~~

 Phoenix Wright stands in the High Prosecutor’s Office, or maybe his own office—the crime scene was always more of a workplace than the agency, anyway. He hasn’t been in this room enough times to recall a faithful recreation, although the features that he was jarred by are rendered in sharp detail: the full teacup resting on the desk as if still waiting for its owner to come back, the uncharacteristic lineup of plastic toys on the windowsill, the wilted floral arrangement letting off the sweet stench of death throughout the office. The rest of the room is a blurry pastiche of Edgeworth-isms and Wright-esque clutter, elegant desk decor lost among mountains of loose paperwork and discarded wrappers.

Phoenix doesn’t remember which defendant hired him, and it doesn’t really matter. How many cases has he fumbled through successfully without even the barest of identifying information? He paces the room, scratching at his stubble wearily, trying to surmise the best point to start his investigation.

The body—the only problem is that he can’t figure out where to place the body. 

 Yellow caution tape stretches from corner to corner of his open office door, tangled and tied in peculiar shapes and patterns. When Miles Edgeworth reaches to press forward, heedless of the visual warning, the tape clings to his outstretched arm like cobwebs, sticky and cloying. The air, too, clings, milky darkness at his back and the corners of his vision, and on his fingers, white powder that flakes into the tangible darkness and onto his clothes like bits of dry snow.

Not snow - chalk, in two large pieces in both of his hands, the oversized, chunky kind intended for children and sidewalks and hopscotch. He curls his fingers right around them, nails leaving crescent moon indents in their surfaces, as he presses through the curtain of tape and into his office. 

 Phoenix instantly knows that Miles shouldn’t be here, and yet he can’t bring himself to be startled or begin barraging him with questions. It wouldn’t change anything, anyway. He raises a hand in greeting, smiling tiredly. In fact, he had a funny feeling that he’d be seeing him somewhere like this. “Are you on the case too?” He shifts to stand on the side of the room, hands on his hips, giving Miles space to step into the crime scene. They’ve never collaborated like this before, but somehow it feels appropriate today. Miles should know this crime from the inside out, after all.

 He rolls the question over in his mind as he stands next to Wright; it’s odd and ill-fitting, yet familiar, like a sweater put away for the summer and brought back out now that the weather has turned. Seeing Wright feels that way too, turns his stomach over and lodges it somewhere near the bottom of his rib cage. Are you on the case too?

“Naturally,” is his eventual answer, and for all that he struggled to grasp it it sounds natural coming out, with just the right amount of loftiness to keep Wright from turning his body in towards Miles’. A quelling of the familiarity before it begins. “And you should be grateful I am - you look lost, Wright.” 

 Phoenix scratches the back of his head. “Yeah, well…” He grins reflexively, half sheepish, half out of genuine glee at getting to feel Miles’s ribbing again. Oh, he’s missed that, no matter how much Miles intends it to push him away. “I got thrown into the deep end. I can’t make heads or tails of it all. You know, I didn’t even get to see the note before it went to the police, and that’s the... the most vital...” His smile gets stuck in a grimace for a moment, like a stuttering television freezing on a single frame. He lets it go, back to being sober and grim.

He clasps his hands behind his back to stop them from continuing to fidget and looks at Miles, studying his face far more carefully than he ever studied the crime scene. “Where do you think we should start?”

 He tilts his chin down to let a curtain of gray draw itself over his visage before he looks at Wright sidelong, a careful degree of separation placed between himself and honeyed brown eyes that are cutting him like knives where he stands; megawatt smiles full of white incisors that are gnawing at him inside, gnawing gnawing gnawing.

“Forget the note,” Miles says dismissively. “You’re coming at this all wrong.” As usual, doesn’t leave his lips but he swears Wright hears it all the same, as if the brief pause in his sentence is just as cruel as the words he didn’t speak into that silence. “The note is…forget the note, for a moment. What you should be thinking about is the body.” 

 It’s a weight off Phoenix’s shoulders to be able to see Miles again, but their reunion doesn’t seem to be mutually beneficial. Edgeworth is as moody and withdrawn and impassable as he was at his lowest points, and though Phoenix has never been one to shy away from throwing himself against a brick wall, he doubts that it would get him what he wanted right now. He lets himself have one quiet moment of disappointment, and then he tears his eyes away from Miles and put his attention back to the office. He has to take a step back, to look at what this collaboration is really about—function, not feeling.

“Right.” Phoenix sighs, rubbing a knuckle against his eye. He’s tired. It’s late, isn’t it? He takes a moment to notice the pale blue beams of moonlight breaking the office’s velvety darkness. Had they been there before? He doesn’t remember. “The body.” Phoenix spreads his hands around the office sardonically. “Well, I’m not sure if you noticed, but it’s not here.” He drops his arms in emphasis. “No one seems to have a clue where it is.”

Something about that, it… hmm.

 Wright is...well, right. His office - is this really his office, this dull and lifeless room, drained of color, shadowed at the edges? - is noticeably lacking a body. Moved, then, but when, and by whom? Miles paws at the recesses of his memory, fumbling for a police report, an interview, a check in from Detective Gumshoe, and comes up empty.

Lord, he can’t even bring to mind the name of the victim. Wright really is a bad influence, isn’t he?

He casts his eyes about the room, seeking...something. An impression. A sign of a struggle. An intrusion in the furniture, in the stacks of papers and debris scattered about the office in a semblance of organized chaos. No body, no, but somewhere there is an empty space, a vacuum, where the body should be.

“We don’t need the body,” he says after a long moment’s internal deliberation. “A body would do, any body, for hypothetical’s sake.” He rolls the chalk in between his thumbs and forefingers. “To fill in the gap, to get a sense of the scene, yes?”

 Phoenix looks down at Miles’s hands and takes a moment to identify the white stub in his fingers as chalk, its powder flecking off onto Edgeworth’s otherwise impeccable coat. “Sure,” he says, stepping back to lean against the wall and cross his arms. “Be my guest.”

In the meantime, his eyes trace over the room much like Edgeworth’s had, picking up suspicion like dust off of every surface. Something seems wrong here. There’s no evidence of a crime where there quite clearly was one. But then again, where did he get such a clear impression of a crime having occurred? He gropes around for an answer, but every time he surfaces with something relevant, it seems to slip from his grasp. It’s beginning to worry him that something bigger is going on, and more than that, it’s starting to frustrate him. He should know this. Why doesn’t he?

“It’s funny,” he says quietly. It’s not actually funny at all. “It’s as if they just disappeared.”

 Cold, sticky dread trickles down his spine like Wright has just cracked an egg against the base of his neck.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Wright,” he snaps to hide his reaction. His words are barely audible over the quickening of his pulse inside his own ears. “People don’t just vanish into thin air.”

Somewhere, here, there is a trace. His fingers trace velvet upholstery, leaving chalk prints behind as he searches for wetness, blood that would be invisible against the red fabric in this dim lighting. There’s something they’ve missed, here. This is a crime scene; therefore, there was a crime. A murder investigation, so there was a murder.

His dress shoes pause in their passage from the rug to the wood flooring, his head tilting towards the wall of windows, out into the night. He can see the dingy silhouette of his reflection in the shining glass. The glass is immaculate; he’s blurry.

A murder investigation? Where did he get that impression?

 Seeing Edgeworth pause, Phoenix slowly pushes himself off of the wall and takes two steps towards him. He had expected them to sound tentative, but instead they land with a certain conviction. “Miles,” he says, still quiet, beginning to take on a grim tone. “There’s something more going on here. Isn’t there?”

Despite Edgeworth’s urging not to think about it, Phoenix’s mind drifts back to the letter. All he’d seen of it was a written-up copy in a police report, printed in a neat typewriter-like font. He remembers the sight of the page and the horrible cold dread that came with holding it, but its words swim on the paper, frustratingly difficult to pin down. It was something about death and decisions. What’s he missing here?

“The victim,” he concludes, speaking it aloud unconsciously even before he comes back to himself. He clenches his fists at his sides, determined, and stares into the back of Miles’s head as if willing him to turn about. “What was their name?”

 The glass in the windows is splintering, a web of thousands and thousands of shimmering fractals. A silent breakage, an implosion of force.

Finally, Miles Edgeworth understands where he is and what he’s doing there.

He half-expects the scene to shift upon the realization, for the walls of his office to melt away into smothering, sweltering darkness cut only by muzzle flash once then twice. When the floor stays solid beneath his quaking legs he forces himself to turn, to look, to see if Phoenix is still Phoenix, or his face has given way to another’s.

But no - no, he’s still there, putting off impossible light in the darkness, in this longest of nights. Surely he doesn’t glow like that, not really - this is Miles’ romanticization, a parting gift from his subconscious mind.

Phoenix is waiting for an answer, hanging on his yet-unspoken words.

“You know the name of the victim, Phoenix,” Miles says slowly, thickly. “It was in the police report. It was in the transcription of the letter. Clear as day. No further questions.” The chalk is flaking against his hands. White prints scatter the sleeves of his suit jacket. “It was a perfect piece of evidence.”

 As soon as Miles says it, Phoenix finds that he does know the name of the victim. There it is, clear at the front of his mind. He’s disappointed himself for a moment for not seeing it sooner, and then he’s furious, and he doesn’t quite understand why. Maybe it’s the fact that Miles has bested him with twisted evidence once again, his contrary and competitive streak showing through at the worst of times. Maybe it’s anger at Miles himself, at the stubborn nature that makes him at turns a worthy opponent and a miserable pain in the ass, and at the foolish pride he insisted on taking down to his grave

Maybe it’s just helpless rage at something he knows he can’t change.

“Miles,” he says, both as an answer and a shaky question. He takes another step towards him, reaching out urgently as if—despite the misery of it all, despite how futile he knows it is—holding on to him will undo what’s already been done.

 Phoenix’s approach makes him shudder, his whole body thrown in every direction as if it might fall apart into individual atoms and scatter him to the wind. Entropy to entropy. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

This Phoenix is not even real, cannot touch him, and yet Miles knows with a conviction beyond conviction that should they meet in this space he will burn away into nothing, or else Phoenix will, and this is the one thing that he still has the ability to spare the foolish, incorrigible, brilliant man before him.

“Don’t do this to yourself, Phoenix,” he says, ragged. “Don’t do this, don’t - wonder. Don’t look for the evidence that isn’t there. Just - fill in the gaps. Make the pieces fit. Whatever pieces you need. Turn this around into something that makes sense to you, please.”

He holds out the chalk with shaking hands. He can’t stand to hold onto it anymore. He has no right. He couldn’t decide where to put the body. 

 Where Phoenix wanted his hands to meet warm shoulders that he could pull close, he instead finds dusty chalk as Miles thrusts it in front of himself like a defense. Despite Miles once again refusing him what he’d wanted, Phoenix fumbles to hold onto it, desperate to keep one last gift from him. Even then, it crumbles in his hands, embedding dust into the creases of his palms as if it were Miles's own ashes.

“No,” Phoenix growls, out of some bullheaded, foolhardy determination to prove Miles wrong. He can fix this, somehow. He can turn this all around.

He reaches out again with hands that are powder-white as if bloodstained, but the room seems to lengthen with every step. He watches helplessly as Miles turns around and curls into himself, clutching his arms like a child, growing further and further out of Phoenix's reach. The light in the room is no longer cool blue as it seeps through the cracks in the window—it’s a bright blood red, growing blinding as the window continues to splinter. There’s a horrible, sharp sound as the glass finally buckles and breaks, failing to hold back some terrible force. Shards of glass whiz through the atmosphere, fine dust glimmering around shards as big as kitchen knives.

Despite the danger Phoenix ploughs on, breaking into a sprint even as the distance between them stretches as if caught past an event horizon. When he’d told Miles to mark out the body, he hadn’t meant for him to create one.

“Miles!” he screams as the shards finally find their home, and—

—he lands on the floor with an emphatic whumph. A dizzying burst of pain jolts through his shoulder as it bears his full weight for an instant. He groans and rolls onto his stomach. He’d thrashed his way off the bed and brought his blankets down with him, and woken himself in the process. Fuck. He softly thunks his head against the floor a few times.

If only he could have had a few more minutes, he thinks, maybe he could’ve saved him.

 ~~~

 Miles,

 Something’s changed. I feel like the last bit of endurance I had has snapped. The shock’s finally worn off and I can feel everything, everything that I haven’t been feeling about you.

I’ve been trying to keep you off my mind, because every time I remember you I feel fucking sick with anger. Every time I hear your name, I feel like I'm burning from the inside out. I can't talk about you anymore—I can barely think about you when anyone else is around. I hate it when they try to give me condolences, and I hate it when they try to talk shit about you, too. It feels like all they can see is one side or another of you, the villain or the victim. You were so much more than the sum of your parts, and if no one can understand that then—then I’m just going to stick to work. It’s easier that way.

But god, when I’m alone, I can’t stop thinking about you. At twelve in the morning when I can’t get to sleep, and at the office when I’m forcing myself through paperwork, and when I’m eating dinner in my apartment alone and can’t stand having the TV on anymore. Miles, the other day I sat on a stakeout in a twenty-four hour diner and I thought about you for four hours straight. I thought I’d nearly shatter my coffee cup from how tightly I was holding it. I think about you so much that sometimes I almost feel like you’re right behind me, waiting to make your entrance with your usual dry quip and haughty attitude and pull a seat up beside me uninvited.

I love you. You know that? I love you, and somehow that doesn’t make it difficult to hate you, too. You mean everything to me, and when I say that I mean everything, all the good and the bad rolled into one. In my mind, you deserve both the highest of honors and the lowest of insults.

Why would you do this? That’s a question I’ve been skirting around for months, stubbornly pretending that I haven’t been pondering it. I mean, I can think of a few contributing reasons off the top of my head, but what I can’t understand is… why would you think this was the only solution? After I worked for so long to get to a position where I could help you, after everything I did to get you acquitted, after everything I did for you, just for you—how could you think you were alone in all this? I could have helped you. I could have done something, anything to prevent you ending up like this. Why didn’t you let me?

Did you care about me at all, Miles? Maybe I was overconfident to think that you’d started to.

I’m realizing now that I structured so much of my life around you, and I don’t know what to do with myself with my keystone taken away. Maybe I don’t have the right to think I understand you, either. I know I’m supposed to move on and find peace or some wishy-washy greeting card crap like that, but I just—I don't even know where to begin. You know that I still can’t wrap my mind around the fact that you’re gone? It feels like just another extended leave of absence from my life that I get angrier and angrier at you for, whether that's fair or not. You still feel real to me, Miles. I keep thinking that maybe—maybe one day I'll find you in a news clipping again, and I'll get to go hunt you down and punch you in your stupid smug face.

You always thought you knew better than everybody, and look where it got you. I hope you're happy, wherever you are.

 Phoenix

 Phoenix has started taking cases again. He's just as forceful in court as he used to be, but he wears a new bitter, lifeless smile. His office is open for business now, the windows open to let out the sickly smell of disuse, the empty mugs and loose paperwork that usually clutter every surface cleared away for once. Still, don’t expect to be offered a seat or a cup of coffee if you drop by. He’s always on his way out.

 ~~~

 Wright-

    I know as well as you do that I won’t be sending this letter, so I may as well be honest. I’m the one who keeps calling your office.

    I have been since I heard - from Detective Gumshoe, as you may have guessed - that you were taking clients again. I’ve never seen your office but for the crime scene photos from Miss Fey’s trial, but I can’t stop picturing you there. Can’t stop wondering what you’re doing, what you’re thinking. I fear it’s become somewhat of an obsession, but in the absence of anyone to rebuke me, I find myself unable to stop. So I call you, and I wait for you to answer, just so I can hear your voice for a few fleeting moments. It must be getting obnoxious- harassment from an unknown source. Perhaps it’s even affecting your business and your client relationships. Yet another apology I owe you. But I can’t stop.

    I’ve been speaking for some time with Detective Gumshoe, and more frequently as of late. It’s cyclical, you see. I wish to talk to my sister, but I can’t, so I call you, and I can’t speak to you, so I call Gumshoe and finally feel as though I have a handle on the outside world, some semblance of control. I didn’t intend for him to be the first to know that I was still alive, but he’s the most valuable source of information that I have, and the most easily convinced to show discretion. Even now, he admires me. Respects me. Fears my rebuke. It’s comical, in a way- if only he could see me when I speak to him, pacing listlessly around a borrowed home, living a borrowed life on borrowed time, unkempt and unshowered and out of touch with everything right down to myself, my own body, my own mind. I’m not even half the man he is and part of me wishes he would realize it and the other part craves his continued attention, his reverence. Two ugly parts, one ugly whole. But I need him, even if it isn’t fair to him. So I call him. He’s the only one who knows how you’re doing.

    Today, when I hung up on you, I called him. We spoke of nothing for a time, nothing important. Developments in my life have been rather lean, as you can imagine, so I let him drone on about this and that and the price of gas and the length of police reports and pretended it meant anything to me at all. And then when he was done, he asked me how I was doing. And I said, not very well. (I’m trying the truth out for a change, Wright, aren’t you proud?) And he said, after a moment, that he was sorry to hear that. Neither of us spoke for a moment. And then I said- and still, I’m not sure why, I don’t even believe that it’s true- that I wanted to come back.

    He was supportive of the idea, of course. Bloviating about how “they’ve” missed me, how the prosecutor’s office needs me, and so on and so forth. I made my excuses, and he was disappointed. “We’d sure be glad to have you back, Mr. Edgeworth.”

    Aren’t those things a person should want to hear? Instead I felt sick. He’s blinded by nostalgic affection for me, blinded to who and what I am, just as you were. Here’s the truth, Wright- I have no business standing in a courtroom. Just the thought of it makes me terrified. I can’t be trusted to do the only thing I’ve ever been trained to do, because the people who trained me to do it were corrupt, and they corrupted me. They twisted me into someone that my father wouldn’t recognize, someone he would have hated, and I’m terrified that I’ll never become something better. I don’t know how to extract a poison that’s sunk all the way down to my bones. How do you undo something that’s woven so tightly into the fabric of who you are?

    I can’t come back, not as I am. And yet it seems like the window of opportunity to get rid of myself has come and gone. I am- inactive. Frozen by indecision, paralyzed by fear of figuring out what comes next. I’m afraid if I start looking inside myself I’ll find that my first instinct was correct, that there’s not enough left to salvage. That no matter how much I force myself to change, I will never be able to change enough to be worthy of standing across from you in a courtroom again, of facing you man to man, person to person. If there’s a road ahead of me, it is one of hard work and painful lessons. A demolition and a slow rebuild.

    When I had finished speaking with Gumshoe, I thought about calling you back. Wondered how deep it would cut me to hear your voice again. But I didn’t. It had begun to rain and I stepped outside, and I stood there for a long time, battered by it, until I was soaked to the skin. I thought of a dream I had had about you, where you were still trying to save me.

    You can’t save me, Wright, anymore than you already have. If I’m to be saved, it’s time for me to put in my lion’s share of the work. And yet it seems daunting, to the point of impossibility, to take the first step.

    If I could let you swoop in and save me again, I would. I’m selfish and I’m scared. I don’t want to do this alone. And yet the only recourse I have is that you will never read these words I’ve written down; that you might never know the worst parts of me.

    I hope you’re well.

 - M.E.

    [Saved to drafts at 06:52pm]

 The recently back-in-business Wright & Co Law Office has been getting a lot of prank phone calls. Some people just can’t believe they’re speaking to a man who put a parrot on the witness stand, but most of the calls are nothing but bland, uncreative silence; a waste of time that stretches on for a few moments before the click and the dial tone. One could argue that they’re interfering with the office conducting business, but one could also argue that Wright doesn’t really want the business in the first place.

 ~~~

 What is there to say, Miles? Here I am again, taking a night off for the first time in months and using it to write to someone who’s never going to respond. What’s wrong with me? Don’t answer that.

I have a miserable cold. My immune system just loves those. I was too dizzy to make it home and I can’t take pills without my throat closing up, so all I can do is wait it out at the offices. I still have trouble going into Mia’s office, too, so I’m holed up on the couch in the reception. What a piece of work I am, huh? So caught up in neuroses I can barely move.

Maybe that’s why I still can’t comprehend the fact that you’re gone. I saw her. I never saw you. When I see a mole at the corner of someone’s mouth my heart sinks, but when I pick out gray hair and a trenchcoat in a crowd it starts racing. I’m always disappointed when it turns out to be another old man on his way home from the office. Why do I still think you could be out there? Why can’t I shake it? You haunt me beyond rational thinking, Miles. Beyond reason.

Being back at work is good for me, I think. At least, it’s a hell of a lot better than sitting at home, staring at the ceiling and flashing through a million thoughts a minute. It’s good to have someone else’s problems taking up my attention for a change. Sometimes, when I have just enough cases to keep me busy, I can reach this—this perfect whirlwind of chaos, this all-consuming balancing act that lets me forget you for a little while. It makes me realize just how hard it is to remember you.

I just don't know what to do with you. You're not alive to me, and you're not quite dead. I'm angry at you beyond belief, but I love you. I miss you. Every time you come to my mind, it's like touching a raw wound. I don’t know how to balance the raw fury and the heavy misery all at once. The fact that I can’t move on from you is tearing me apart.

So I’m… I’m going to try to stop thinking of you for a while. I hope you’ll understand.

There’s so much I want to say to you in these letters—so much I’d rather say to your face as I shake you by the shoulders—but I know it’s not going to get me anywhere to keep stewing in these feelings. To keep writing to a dead man. Because you are dead—even if I can’t bring myself to believe it, I think I have to start saying it. I can’t live in denial like this forever. Maybe eventually, the idea will start to stick.

I need to focus on my work. On the people who are still here. I need to help as many of them as I can, no matter how much it takes out of me. Maybe I can save a few from going the same way you did, or maybe I can’t. I still have to try.

(So maybe it’ll take some running away, but call yourself a hypocrite if you’d look down on me for that.)

I love you, Miles. I always will, no matter how much distance is between us.

 Phoenix

 Phoenix’s office… Phoenix’s office is the city now. He does all his work in the streets, tracing the unseen threads of his cases as if he alone can see them shine clearly in the daylight. He takes all his calls on the run and wolfs down his lunches standing on street corners, eyes flicking between faces passing by, never not working. When he absolutely must, he collapses on a couch in his office or catnaps on a bench in a courthouse. Sometimes his smile loses its sheen as he raises his sickly, tired eyes to the skyline, but just as quickly he looks back down to the street and slips back into the crowd. There are people to see, places to go. Weights on his shoulders, eyes on his back.

 ~~~

 [Unsent] (Subject: Phoenix)

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    I woke up full of energy today, motivated and buzzing in ways that frightened me.

    I wondered if today would finally be the day- if every day between now and the day I left was just a bit of borrowed time, and with this final burst of adrenaline I would finally put my initial plans into action. It was peculiar to realize that although that step no longer seemed exhausting, daunting in its difficulty, I simply found it- unappealing. I couldn’t stop thinking that there were so many other things I could do, instead.

    So I did other things.

    I fried an egg and ate it. I washed my clothes. And then I began to gather every bit of paper I had at my disposal; napkins and newspapers, magazine pages and receipts.

    I don’t know if you’ll remember this- although you may, your memory seems sharper than mine when it comes to the days of our youth- but in school we were taught to fold paper cranes. As I recall, you took to it immediately, whereas I struggled immensely with the task. It seemed to me that my fingers were out of sync with my mind, that I couldn’t maneuver them the way I wanted to to replicate the intricate folds that came so easily to you. You showed me over and over again, patient in spite of my growing frustration, but I wouldn’t master the process until several years later. I practiced in private until I could fold one the size of a quarter with complete accuracy. Perfectly, just the way von Karma demanded everything to be, although I never would have allowed him to see me engaging in such childish and unproductive activities. And once I had mastered the ability, I was satisfied, and I ceased folding them out of any bit of paper I could lay my hands on. I haven’t folded one in years. 

    Until today. 

    The sense-memory, the ghost of all those cranes still left inside my fingers, came back to me nearly immediately, and so all of those napkins and newspapers, magazine pages and old receipts, have now become cranes of various sizes, scattered across every surface of my temporary home. I must have a papercut on every finger. And yet the energy inside me remains.

    Tomorrow could be different, or the day after, or the day after. This may be the last reprieve I’m granted from what, until now, has seemed like endless emptiness, endless grief, endless fatigue. Or perhaps it won’t be. Perhaps it doesn’t have to be.

    There are things I have to do, while I still have the drive to do them. I need help, and I don’t know where to find it. I need help in finding where to find help. I need to reconcile what it means to be a person in need of help. I need to decide if I can treat myself as a person deserving of that help. 

    And I need- case files, police reports, something, anything, from Gumshoe. I need your cases. I need to see your fingerprints on the future of our legal system, so I can believe that there is something for me to go back to. I need your tenacity and your faith, even if I’ve forfeited my rights to them. I need to earn them. I will earn them. I’ll earn you, a place in your landscape, the right to stand across from you in court.

    I write this not as a letter to you, but as a reminder to myself, my tomorrow self, of the path ahead. When inspiration sparks, we must go on ahead. We can’t go back. We are no longer going back.

    Phoenix- I will see you soon.

 - Miles

     [Saved to drafts at 4:51pm]

 There is a sudden, peculiar uptick in the depth and accuracy of evidence and witness statements in the cases that Phoenix Wright defends in court. Though only barely noticeable, to an extremely meticulous observer, it would feel almost as though his cases are guided by a careful hand; one that never pushes, never plays its cards too plainly, but sifts through everything, separating grit from pearl before it ever reaches Wright’s hands. Only one confusing, careless incident slips through the cracks; inexplicably, tucked into a stack of crime scene photos, is an item not listed on any evidence sheet, unrelated to the case at hand: a technically perfect paper crane, folded out of the glossy cover of a foreign language magazine. 

 ~~~

 CONCLUSION

 ~~~

 Seeing Phoenix Wright again is a blow that he expects. And a blow that he doesn’t.

There is Wright, in the police precinct, overhead fluorescents washing out the rich tones of his skin, flattening him, deepening the circles under his eyes. And yet it’s more than the lights; Wright is leaner, gaunter in the face. Wary and weary in ways that make Miles’ stomach turn. And his eyes, when he looks at Miles, are flinty and hard until the moment of recognition.

Then they flare. They blaze. And Miles is engulfed in the fire of Phoenix’s furious agony.

It would’ve been better for everyone if you never came back from the dead, Edgeworth!

And yet the show must go on. Time moves, rushes like a river. And they claim to trust one another but they don’t talk. And they don’t talk. And they don’t talk.

Those moments will come, later, wrapped in blankets of snow and strung between the hearts on playing cards. Stuck in the pages of passports and woven through the buttonholes of a waistcoat.

Wounds heal. Scars become memories. And some bodies stay buried. 

 ~~~

 There's a box of letters in Phoenix Wright's office. He kicks them into a corner of his closet and tries to forget about them.

Edgeworth looks... better. His sharp angles worn down somewhat, his bitter glare replaced with a steely firmness. Not quite healed enough to be reborn a different man, but far from the vengeful wraith he used to be. A fresh in-between, a step towards something new. It makes Phoenix irrationally angry with him for reasons he can't articulate.

Except to snap at Phoenix when he once implies that the words in his final note were less than truthful, Edgeworth doesn't talk about what happened after he left. Phoenix, stubborn as ever, doesn't ask him. They play a long, silent waiting game, trying to see whose will is going to crumble first, who will finally bring up the elephant in the room and start the cascade of arguments to follow. A game of poker with all their cards on the table, but their eyes resolutely pointed anywhere else.

Despite refusing to say a word, Phoenix loses anyway. Edgeworth leaves for Europe again. This time, he at least stops to says goodbye. Phoenix repeats it hollowly, watches him leave with a numbness in his fingers. No more letters this time. He promised himself.

There's a box of letters sitting in the Wright & Co. law offices. The paper has begun to wrinkle.

[charlieknighte]

un jour tu t’en voudrais - part 2

(Read part 1 here)

content warnings: terminal illness, drunkenness and smoking, unhealthy family dynamics

Ethan flops down beside him, to all appearances casual and unbothered. Maelgwyn takes a moment to be amazed at that. He’s nothing like Maelgwyn or even Edmund, who shrivel under the anger of those around them. It just seems to glance right off of him. “I don’t really blame them for needing a break. That was a shitshow,” he says, hand hovering above Maelgwyn’s as a question. When Maelgwyn nods, he takes his arm and twines their fingers together. He strokes the back of Maelgwyn's hand with his thumb, which is a nice detail. It really does soothe him a little. 

“Yeah.” Maelgwyn lays his head on his shoulder and feels their act fall apart for a moment. He needs a moment’s worth of real comfort. It's easy to get it from Ethan. He touches him so casually that it doesn't feel strange. Like his hands are supposed to be here. Maelgwyn closes his eyes.

Ethan rests his cheek on his hair. "Leaving me a good Yelp review later?" he murmurs under the music.

Maelgwyn has to smile a little. "You have a Yelp?"

" Hitchcock and Hitchcock, Limited. Look us up."

"Why are you limited? Do you have shareholders?"

"Aubrey lent us a hundred bucks."

"For what? "

"Supplies. Business expenses."

"Weed."

Ethan shifts guilty. "Well—"

Maelgwyn snorts and buries his face in his neck. "You're so fuckin' dumb." Ethan smells like the shitty clove cigarettes he only smokes when he’s in one of his art major moods and some expensive cologne he more than likely shoplifted. It reminds Maelgwyn of the half-trashy, half-pretentious book and cigarette (and weed) smell of the basement he and his friends haunt. He takes a shaky breath in. He wants to be home so badly. Ethan goes quiet and reaches up to smooth Maelgwyn’s hair off his forehead. For a minute they lean together, and Maelgwyn takes comfort in having a fraction of home here with him.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Maelgwyn murmurs. “I’d be freaking out if you weren’t acting so unbothered by everything.”

“Happy to be moral support. Glad you didn’t hire Edmund?”

He is. Edmund wouldn’t still be grinning like an asshole and joking around after inspiring such wrath towards himself. And anyway, something about Edmund—the prissiness or the slipperiness, one or both—had made Maelgwyn worry that he might end up getting along just a bit too well with some of his family members. The thought of getting abandoned to fend for himself had exhausted him. "Edmund's holiday rates were higher anyway," he says, trying to be light. 

"Right, for the crying." Ethan sighs against his hair. "Wish he was here anyway. We could've gotten up to some trouble ."

"I think it's going bad enough.”

Before Ethan can say anything, the door to the porch opens. Samothes steps out, looking grave, and Maelgwyn’s heart sinks. He says, “Can I speak to Ethan for a moment?”

“Me?” says Ethan. He lifts his head and exchanges a glance with Maelgwyn warily. Samothes nods and motions for him to step inside. Ethan slinks off of the porch swing unwillingly, like a child being sent to the principals’ office. He shoots Maelgwyn a theatrically wide-eyed look before stepping inside, and then he’s gone, swallowed up by the house. The cold of the evening hits Maelgwyn hard where Ethan used to be touching him. He curls up tighter and puts his arms around himself.

“So, your boy,” Angelo gets out before Maelgwyn gives him a scathing glare and shuts him up. There’s a time and a place for making fun of Ethan, but after he was just doing his best to comfort him, Maelgwyn isn’t in the mood.

“I don’t want to talk,” Maelgwyn says, not specifying to who. 

"Your dad's gonna eat him alive and spit out his bones," Adelaide says regardless. 

“Not gonna say he deserves it,” Angelo says, cautious, “but shit. Even ignoring what he didn’t know, that was out of line. He’s really got a chip on his shoulder, huh?”

“How much does he know about your parents if he already hates them that badly?” Adelaide asks quietly. Samol’s guitar stops for a moment, and then picks up again.

Maelgwyn unfolds himself and gets up. “Who gives a fuck? Almost all of us hate each other to some degree anyway. I shouldn't have thought he’d be any different.” He crosses to the door back inside with quick, angry steps. 

" Maelgwyn ," says Adelaide, but she can't get anything out in time before he slams the door behind him. He makes his way through the family room and into the dark space between the foyer and the stairs, where he paces back and forth with his hands in his hair. He doesn’t remember what convoluted series of backward, troubled thoughts led him to think all this would be a good idea. That seeing his parents terse and upset and shouting again would make up for all the times he was forced to sit through it as a child. That drawing back the curtain of familial tolerance that masks their disappointment in him would reveal something new and not just break his heart again. Instead, it all just makes him want to scream.

“Maelgwyn?” He turns to see Samot’s silhouette in the doorway to the kitchen, wavering. Maelgwyn’s heart drops, and his hot anger settles into a cool despair. His father takes a step towards him, balancing himself against the railway of the staircase. His hair is out of its updo, and it falls over his face, untamed. “Sweetheart, he says, voice trembling from more than just wine, “I’m sorry you had to see that.” That’s what he always says. It doesn’t matter, because Maelgwyn keeps seeing it anyway.

“It’s fine, dad,” he says, more to avoid a scene than because it’s actually fine. Samot comes closer, taking him by the shoulders. His face is streaked with tears, mascara smudged around his eyes. Maelgwyn is jarringly reminded of one of his Christmases as a child, when he’d cried from the overwhelming stimulation of his scratchy clothes and his loud relatives and the overly warm living room and Samot had dragged him out to the hallway. He had taken Maelgwyn by the shoulders and shaken him and hissed at him to be normal , as if he was such a disappointment that that was all he could try to ask of him anymore. Maelgwyn had been confused and afraid, and it only frightened him more when Samot came to his room after the party and sat on his bed and apologized through tears of his own. He’s never known how to deal with his father crying, and nothing’s changed since the last time it happened.

“It isn't fine,” Samot says, shaking his head. “It wasn’t fair of us to react like we did. I know you’ve been having a hard time, what with your grandfather. We shouldn’t be so hard on you.” Maelgwyn hates when they say that. When he was a kid, any of his attempts to act out were explained away by his fathers’ brief separation, and now his grandfather’s impending death has become the scapegoat. As if he hasn’t been struggling with it his entire life. As if his entire existence isn’t an expression of his family’s grief, more a channel for their hopes and frustrations than a child. He grits his teeth and stays silent. Samot breathes a long, trembling sigh. "I think I was… harsh, to judge Ethan so much. Maybe he isn't well-mannered, or—or studious, or ambitious, but I'm sure he has a—a good heart. Yes?"

"Yeah," Maelgwyn lies, not wanting to let him down right now. He can only imagine the conversation that went on in the kitchen while he was outside. He wonders if they see this as a purposeful act of rebellion against them or a misguided decision by their stunted, naive son. He wonders if he wants to know.

“Your father said he’d talk to to him, but… we don’t expect him to change all that much. As long as he’s good to you and you’re happy, we’re happy. Even if we can’t stand him.” He pulls Maelgwyn into a hug, sniffling. " Mon p’tit loup . We just want what’s best for you."

On the one hand, Maelgwyn wishes it wasn't necessary for him to constantly be making apologies in varying states of sobriety. On the other, it's far easier to bear Samot’s short-lived anger than Samothes being oppressively silent and banging doors and plates for days when he's upset with him. He tries not to think about the implications of what’s best for him and hugs his father lightly. It’s unpleasant and stilted for him—it always is nowadays—but not as severely as usual.

Just as quickly as he pulled him close, Samot lets go of him again, wiping at his nose with the back of his hand. “I’m going to lie down for a little while.” He puts a hand on Maelgwyn’s shoulder and makes his way past him with some effort. 

“Do you need help, dad?” Maelgwyn asks. Samot waves a hand at him. He climbs the stairs in a way that looks laborious but not dangerous. Maelgwyn watches him until he’s gone, then sits down on the floor to put his head on his knees and try not to sob.

It's not enough to be himself, to be alive and do what he thinks is best. He has to be something his family can take comfort and pride in. He had no sway in choosing them, but still they watch over his shoulders no matter where he goes and criticize him with a harshness they claim to have earned by the sheer virtue of being blood relations. He didn't ask to be born, but they act like it was his best work and nothing he's done has lived up to it since. If his parents really think he's dating Ethan, then they must really have given up on him.

He raises his head at that thought, brought out of his misery by the sheer ridiculousness of the situation. He paid Ethan to act like a shithead, and he was so good at it that it made his family implode in on itself. And after everything, somehow it brought them to magnanimously extend the olive branch of accepting his shortcomings for once. It’s not ideal, but it’s something. He rests his head back against the wall and remembers a breathing exercise, does his best to keep track of the counts until he’s calm. 

He’s never seriously considered the prospect of dating a Hitchcock, he realized. They're bitchy and prissy and altogether a little uncanny. It had been hard to separate them in his mind when they were always sitting together, heads tilted and eyes narrowed in the exact same glare. They'd Snapchat each other while they were in the same room or sit off in their own corner painting each others' nails and loudly chatting shit about everyone they knew. Sometimes they make you feel awfully unwelcome, like three is a crowd. Maelgwyn liked them, but he'd never taken the time to take a shine to a particular twin. Let alone the loud-mouthed one who snored obnoxiously through their film classes and grabs any elongated object to wield as a sword the moment he's drunk. 

All Maelgwyn had thought about when he chose him was trying to find someone who could piss his parents off and wasn't Snitch Nightly.  Now, he thinks about all the times Ethan’s made him feel like they were two against the world tonight, how far he was willing to go to piss off his parents for him, how he’s always asking to touch him and being gentle with his hands. Maelgwyn’s been having trouble breathing for much of the night, but now he really does worry that his lungs are going to burst. He doesn’t know what to do with this new feeling. It just spins around with the rest of them, making him dizzy.

He stumbles upright and makes his way back out to the back porch, throwing open the door. The Tristés blink at him. "Where's Ethan?" he asks. He doesn’t know why, but he needs to see him.

Adelaide furrows her eyebrows in thought, and then puts down her phone with some concern. “I don’t know.”

"Oh, shit," says Angelo, "your dad might've actually killed and eaten him." Maelgwyn scrambles out of the door and down the stairs, out around the corner of the house and to the garage. He did hire Ethan to do this, but he shouldn’t just have tossed him into the deep end to fend for himself. He can’t imagine the lecture he’s having to field right now. He winces at the thought of the volume Samothes must be affecting.

The side door to the garage is open, spilling a rectangle of yellow light onto their fence and flower bushes. “I’m not stupid, Ethan,” Samothes is saying, muffled. “I know you want me to dislike you. I just need us to level with each other for a moment.” Maelgwyn walks faster, almost anticipating seeing Samothes with a crowbar or a heavy wrench in his hand. Instead he sees Ethan only a few feet away from the entrance, leaning back against one of the workshop benches. He’s holding his hands in front of him and nodding politely. 

"I think you're a good kid," Samothes is saying, to Maelgwyn’s complete disbelief. “I know this delinquent shtick isn’t you. Or at least not all you are. And I know… that you must’ve heard enough from Maelgwyn to hate me.” He sighs. “I’m not going to argue with what he’s told you. I wasn’t the father he needed.”

Maelgwyn stands there, still and quiet. Of course his father would blame himself like this. He can’t stop seeing people as tools, evaluating them in terms of what purposes they can fulfill and nothing else. In failing to perform the role of a perfect family man, the grandiose expectations Samothes holds for himself must’ve taken a shattering blow. He’s never moved past the perfectionistic frame of mind he impressed upon Maelgwyn as a child. Maelgwyn thinks about screaming.

“I only want to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Samothes says, uncharacteristically soft-spoken and humble. “God knows Maelgwyn had to sit through enough of his family falling apart. He shouldn’t have to see it again. If you care about him, I think you should feel the same.”

Ethan opens his mouth and hesitates as if deliberating how much to reveal, although Maelgwyn figures he’s really figuring out what to pull out of his ass. “I do,” he says softly. “I care about him very much. I thought I could come here and defend him, so he wouldn’t have to be alone with...” He stops and blinks like he’s feeling stupid. He’s either an incredibly good actor, or some of that was real. Maelgwyn hasn’t been able to breathe properly since he stepped out here.

Samothes doesn’t protest. He looks, in fact, like he agrees that Maelgwyn needed it. “I don’t need you to forgive me. That’s for Maelgwyn to do, if he decides to. I just want us to get along for his sake.”

Ethan nods, lips tight. “I can do that.”

“You know when to quit and save face. That’s good.” Samothes finally puts a hand out for him to shake. “You ever thought about being a politician?”

Ethan laughs nervously. It’s a common joke among his friends that he’s wasting his potential as a business or law major. “I have been complimented on my filibuster from time to time.” He shakes Samothes’s hand, wincing from the strength again. Samothes pats him on the shoulder. “You should get back to the house. Maelgwyn’s probably looking for you.”

Ethan looks out of the door to see Maelgwyn already standing there, wallowing in devastation. His eyes widen just a little, but he gives no other indication that he saw anything. “Yeah,” he says, turning back to Samothes. “He probably is. I’ll see you back in the house?”

“Of course. I just need some time.” Samothes walks deeper into the garage. Ethan slips out the door and closes it behind him gingerly. He leans back against it and fidgets with his hands. He looks guilty, as if he was caught saying something sordid. 

Maelgwyn grabs his hand and walks him away from the garage, skirting the house and pulling him around a corner. He doesn’t want Samothes to hear what he’s going to say, but then he realizes he doesn’t even know what he will say. He keeps himself from slipping into a fresh wave of panic by grounding himself with Ethan’s grip on his hand.

Ethan chews on his lip. Eventually he says, “How long were you been standing there?”

“Since he asked you to level with him.”

“Oh. You missed the argument, then.” Ethan might be blushing, but it’s hard to tell in the dim yard. “Look, Maelgwyn… we all worried about you when you went to your folks’ for holidays. You’d come back so tired. Like it took something out of you. I thought…” He gestures helplessly. So some of that was real.

“Yeah, you can see why.” Maelgwyn leans against the wall behind him and rubs his face, weary. He breathes out in a rush. “Ethan, I’m… I’m glad you’re here. I wish I hadn’t paid you for it.” He barely knows what he means by that. That it was a lot of money, that what he asked Ethan to do only ended up making him feel worse, that he wishes Ethan could be here in a different capacity. It occurs to him that they’re still holding hands, but Ethan isn’t trying to wiggle out of his grasp. His hand is warm and his grip is steady.

“It wasn’t really about the cash, Mael.” Ethan looks down at their hands like he’s thinking the same thing. “I would’ve done this for you even if you weren’t paying. You’re... you . But you came offering to pay up front.” He makes a sheepish little face. “What was I gonna do, turn down money? Student loans, y’know.”

Maelgwyn stands there and lets it sink in that the Hitchcocks played him for a fool, as he should’ve expected them to. He starts laughing incredulously, and then actually laughing, because this is pretty funny when all things are considered. Ethan chuckles too, even though he’s trying to keep it down. “Fuck you,” Maelgwyn says, fond and still laughing. 

“Sorry,” Ethan says, giving him one of his rare genuine smiles. It’s half-wonky and shy and beautiful. Maelgwyn wonders when he meant when he said that he’s him. If he meant that he was happy to waive his fees or happy to play his boyfriend. Maelgwyn’s having a strange night, and his emotions have been jumbled around in his chest like a bag of toys strewn across the floor. His feelings are crossing in strange ways. “I’ll take you out to eat when we’re home,” Ethan says, looking at the ground bashfully and kicking at the grass. “Many, many times. We’ll make it even.”

Maelgwyn smiles at him, chest still light from laughter. Ethan leans against the wall beside him, and they look out at the yard, to the streets beyond, up to the stars. The fall air cools Maelgwyn’s cheeks, and the sounds of the night begin to creep in to fill the quiet. “Are you okay?” Ethan asks softly.

“I don’t know.”

“Maelgwyn…” Ethan takes a step out to stand in front of him. He cups his face with the hand that isn't still in his. “If this isn’t working out the way you wanted it to, just say the word and we’ll do something different. I’m here for you.” He strokes his thumb down his cheek and drops his hand. “Get your money’s worth, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Maelgwyn’s in a complete daze from having witnessed a true moment of sincerity from a Hitchcock. They’re rare enough to qualify as legends to be hotly debated by academics. Not to mention all the mental calculus he’s going to have to do to rationalize the touch he can still feel on his cheek. Ethan gives him a reassuring little smile and nods towards the back porch, and Maelgwyn lurches back to something resembling reality and starts to lead him back. When they walk up the stairs Samol is gone, probably back inside, and the Tristés are stretched out on the porch swings browsing their phones. Angelo shuts his off when he sees them and jumps up to stretch. “Thought you were dead meat for a while there.”

Ethan blinks up at him, confused and overwhelmed all over again. "I think I just got the dad talk." 

Angelo bursts into obnoxious laughter. Adelaide puts a hand over her mouth, trying to be a little more subtle. "They're really lowering their standards for you, bro," says Angelo, heaving himself up off his swing to slap Maelgwyn's shoulder hard. "No offense, Ethan. You seem like a great guy, just—" 

"I stole your dad's watch," Ethan says immediately, as if being called a great guy is an affront somehow. Angelo stops being a bright bouncing asshole and stares at him.

“What?”

Ethan takes a Rolex out of his pocket and holds it up. Maelgwyn stands there with the Tristés in silence, imagining that they too are replaying his terse handshake with Tristero in their heads in search for the moment it had left his wrist. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” says Adelaide at the same time as Angelo starts laughing again.

“Holy shit, Ethan,” is all Maelgwyn can say. Ethan looks pleased with himself, as if he’d completely forgotten about the whole affair and this was a nice surprise. He snaps the watch on his wrist, and Adelaide stands up, agitated. 

“Take that off ,” she snaps, authoritative.

“Finders keepers,” Ethan says, childish. 

They tumble into an argument, and Maelgwyn can’t bring himself to follow even a word of it. He leans against the railing of the deck and watches Ethan defend his point, back straight and indignant, hands animated, curls slipping out of his purposefully sloppy hairstyling and falling over his face. Maelgwyn has to admit, admiring in a backwards way, that he has some balls. Angelo leans behind him, grinning. “Thats so fuckin’ funny. Tristero’s gonna lose his shit when he gets back.” He nudges Maelgwyn’s shoulder. “Good game, Maelgwyn.”

“It’s been a wild night,” Maelgwyn says, voice small. Angelo nudges his shoulder harder as if to say buck up. Maelgwyn clears his throat and stands up, interrupting the argument in what he imagines is a lull. He hadn’t really kept track that closely. “Ethan, can I talk to you?”

Adelaide swivels her acidic glare to him. Ethan raises his eyebrows, but he says, “Sure.” 

Maelgwyn grabs his hand again. The amount of times he’s done this is starting to feel overly self-indulgent, but he needs something to steady him. Ethan follows him back in to the dinner table, where all of this went to shit. The dishes have been cleared away and the candles extinguished. There’s a quiet, dejected conversation taking place in the kitchen, a far cry from the earlier argument. Maelgwyn leans against the edge of the table, noting the sour looks Adelaide is giving them through the window as she fends off the jabs a smiling Angelo must be throwing at her. “I’m gonna take you up on that offer,” Maelgwyn says, chewing his lip. “Things went too far. I didn’t want it to play out like this.”

“I thought so.” Ethan casts a quick glance over his shoulder and turns back calmly, having seen the Tristés too. He puts a hand on Maelgwyn’s hip and leans in just a little. “What do you want me to do?”

“I don’t really know. Just… do what you do. Make them love you.” He gives Ethan a wide-eyed, imploring look. “Y’know.”

“Alright, alright. But...” Ethan slips his arm around his waist and pulls him against him. “I charge extra for the good boyfriend act,” he says, voice low. He’s giving him his most stupid, smarmy grin, eyes half-lidded.

Maelgwyn scoffs lightly and wrinkles his nose at him, staying light to ignore the uptick of his heart rate. “You’re not grifting any more money out of me.”

“Just fifty bucks.”

“No.”

“Twenty. Friends and family discount.”

“ No .”

“Timmies on the way back.”

Maelgwyn can’t help a little laugh. He puts his arms around Ethan’s neck and leans in. “You can have a small coffee and one donut.”

“ Crisse de câlice , you’re cheap.”

“You know I asked you to go heavy on the Joual because I think it sounds stupid, right? It isn’t cute.”

“ Va chier .” Ethan kisses his cheek, smiling. Maelgwyn realizes that to bystanders it’s a natural escalation of the situation, but he still didn’t expect it. Ethan pats his back and lets him go. “Alright.” He takes a breath and straightens up, going into the crisis resolution mode Maelgwyn has seen him in once or twice before. He remembers to tug his sleeve over Tristero’s watch, fortunately.

Maelgwyn hadn’t realized just how badly his heart was hammering until Ethan let him go. He trails after him, half dazed and wondering if that really was only for show. The kitchen quiets as they walk in. Tristero, Severea and Galenica are back, and they regard Ethan with suspicion even as Samothes gives them a stern look. Samol, at least, smiles at their approach. Ethan seems smaller somehow, and he looks more regretful than Maelgwyn ever imagined he could. “I just want to apologize,” he says, voice perfectly reflecting his demeanor. 

Tristero scoffs exaggeratedly and receives a glare from Samothes that drips with even more disapproval. When he turns back, Samothes nods at Ethan encouragingly. Maelgwyn can tell he’s not fooled one bit, but he’s still exactly where Ethan wants him. Ethan takes a slightly shaky breath and says, “I came here completely pissed off at all of you. Maelgwyn… I know he didn’t have an easy time when he was younger, but I didn’t know the specifics, so… I was angry with all of you. I shouldn’t have been so antagonistic. You’re all under enough stress, what with…” His eyes dart to Samol, who nods to him in concession. Maelgwyn has a feeling he knows what’s going on, too. Maybe they all do. He prays they follow Samothes’s example and take Ethan at his word.

Ethan sniffles. “And, y’know… my father took us away from our mother when I was young. And then he left us pretty soon after that. So I’ve never had a real thanksgiving. Being here made me remember, and I got so…” He trails off and sighs again. He’s really pulling out all the stops, his voice getting thick and melancholy as if he’s nearing tears. Tristero still looks sour, but faces are starting to soften, and this last admission gets some soft coos of pity.

Holy shit, Maelgwyn thinks as he watches him. He has no way of knowing if any of this is real with Hitchcock, but it feels like one of those good lies that contains an element of the truth. He’s doing an incredible job of using his family’s proclivity to blame misbehavior on one terrible incident against them. Edmund’s ability to cry on the spot might have come in handy right now, but Maelgwyn still feels secure in his choice of Hitchcock. He leans against the wall and watches Ethan work. It’s admirable from a filmmaker’s perspective. It’s appreciated from his own.

Ethan delicately wipes his eyes. He really is crying a little now. Maelgwyn puts a hand on his shoulder, half to play the concerned boyfriend and half to steady him through his performance. “I was just so upset, but… I know the way I behaved didn’t fix anything. I just want Maelgwyn to have a family that he wants to be around. That’s not going to happen if I keep causing problems for you. I’m sorry. I really am.”

“Aw, it’s alright, son,” says Samol, pushing himself off the counter to give Ethan a hug. Ethan clings to him, sniffling pitifully. Samol pats his back. He might be getting old, but his word still carries weight. No one would dare speak out against Ethan now that he’s won Samol’s support. Samothes is right—Ethan would make a good politician. 

Samol steps back and says, loud and light, “Now, what do we say to a second supper around the TV?” It’s not really a question so much as it is a firm signal for everyone to settle down.

“Sounds like a Thanksgiving,” Samothes says. He nods at Ethan approvingly, smiling despite himself. Ethan wipes off the remainder of his tears and puts a tremor into his smile. He’s just too much.

They trail out to the living room, and Tristero steps out to fetch his children from the deck. Angelo is trying extremely hard to keep a straight face, and Adelaide gives Ethan a chilly look every time her father isn’t looking, but they don’t mention a word about the watch. As everyone mills about, Ethan flops down on a recliner and rubs at his face. Maelgwyn squeezes in to sit beside him. “You okay?” he murmurs.

Ethan tries to look at him like he doesn’t understand what he means, but he overacts it by a smidgen. “Yeah,” he says lightly. His eyeliner had ended up smudged again from his waterworks. Maelgwyn reaches out and fixes it as best he can, turning it into something closer to a smokey eye. Ethan wrinkles up his nose but still obligingly closes his eyes for him. “What, I’m not pretty enough for you?”

“You will be once you’re cleaned up.” Maelgwyn realizes how gentle and familiar his tone was and feels a smidgen self-conscious. He lets his hand drop, brushing Ethan’s cheek as it goes. The usual sharp edges of Ethan’s expression have been rounded away. He smiles at Maelgwyn softly, head leaning against the couch. Maelgwyn finds himself with a thousand untowards thoughts that come on so fast they leave him breathless.

He’s glad he chose Ethan, for his own sake. He really is. But he’s starting to realize there are downsides to asking a handsome boy to dinner at his parents’ house and giving him free license to be affectionate. The implication was that everything would go back to normal when they left the house, but after Ethan’s seen him come nearly to his breaking point and Maelgwyn’s felt his lips on his cheek and the warmth of the crook of his neck, it feels like that’s never going to be possible. He’s thrust a great amount of intimacy on Ethan tonight. He almost feels the need to apologize. 

True to form, Ethan doesn’t seem bothered. He slips an arm around Maelgwyn's waist and snuggles up against him, turning his attention back to the rest of the living room. “Is there even such a thing as a Thanksgiving movie?” he asks, voice bubbling with laughter, and Maelgwyn realizes that the discussion had wandered that way as he’d been distracted.

“Home For the Holidays,” Samothes suggests. The Tristés start to shout him down immediately.

“Addams Family Values!” Adelaide yells. Angelo and Maelgwyn chorus in support, and Samol laughs. Samothes puts his hands up in defeat and shuffles around in the DVD cabinet again. As always, it takes ten or more minutes for the family to arrange themselves around the television. Lights are switched off, drinks and leftovers are fetched from the kitchen, spots are bickered over and cushions are pulled onto the floor. Finally, blessedly, the movie starts.

Ethan's arm stays around Maelgwyn the whole evening, snug and secure. Maelgwyn wallows in the remnants of his various emotional breakdowns, oscillating between feeling foolish for arranging all this in the first place and marveling at how smoothly Ethan took care of things and comforted him to boot. Eventually Ethan’s hand drifts to Maelgwyn’s hair and absentmindedly plays with his curls, and he melts into a confused but generally positive puddle. He’s still drifting between worries, but they’re fewer and further between now. 

He dozes through half of the movie, having seen it a dozen times before during playdates with Adelaide and Angelo in the past. Once he wakes up and sees that Samothes has fetched Samot, who looks sleepy but a little more sober. He gives Maelgwyn a tired but true smile, head lolling on Samothes’s shoulder. There’s a warmth in Maelgwyn’s chest that he usually never feels when his parents are around. He finds himself smiling when he wakes up a couple of times, and feels almost regretful when the movie ends.

The lights are flicked back on, to several people’s complaints, and everyone begins to stretch and shuffle around picking up plates. Maelgwyn stays resting on Ethan’s chest, sleepy and warm and content. Nobody bothers them, most likely figuring they need the rest after all that excitement. Eventually Ethan stirs, and Maelgwyn realizes he’d been asleep too. “You alright, cher ?” he asks Maelgwyn, voice a little husky. Maelgwyn’s breath catches in his chest strangely.

“Yeah,” Maelgwyn says, truthfully.

Ethan rests his chin on the top of his head. “We did okay, I think,” he murmurs. Maelgwyn finds his hand and squeezes it. He would be happy to lie here for the rest of the night, or even until the next morning when they have to catch their flight back. The turmoil in his chest has finally settled.

“Did anyone see my watch after dinner?” says Tristero. “I think I left it somewhere.”

Maelgwyn resists the urge to sit bolt upright and pushes himself up more slowly. Murmurs of denial are going around the room. Adelaide gives Ethan a look so furious that Maelgwyn is surprised it doesn’t physically scorch him, but when her father looks at her she just shrugs. Maelgywn pulls Ethan up, trying to angle his arm to obscure the bump under his sleeve. “We’re gonna head out, I think, dad.” He tries not to sound too hurried.

Samot struggles his way off of the couch to take Maelgwyn’s face and give him a pinot-scented kiss on each cheek. “Always good to see you, sunshine.” Maelgwyn winces, but only a little. Samot looks at Ethan but doesn’t take a step towards him. “Be safe, you two.” 

He goes to flop back on the couch. Ethan and Maelgwyn exchange a look. Ethan pulls a dramatic mock-offended face, and Maelgwyn has to try hard not to laugh. They circle the rest of the room with their goodbyes. Severea and Galenica trade polite handshakes that make Ethan wince again. Samol, true to form, gives Ethan a hearty hug with a slap on the back and a come back now, y'hear? The Tristés clamor to get Ethan’s instagram, and Maelgwyn waits uneasily as they chat and their father gets more and more animated about his search for the watch. He has to yank Ethan out of the room by the arm once Tristero really starts kicking up a fuss. “Cutting it close,” he hisses to Ethan, pulling him out to the foyer. 

Ethan looks at him with big, sad eyes. “I’ve never had a real Thanksgiving before, Maelgwyn. I was enjoying myself.” Maelgwyn feels genuinely sympathetic for a moment, and then Ethan snorts and goes back to smiling like an asshole and he has no way to know if that was a real display of emotion or not. They put their coats and shoes back on in silence.

“Heading out?” Maelgwyn tenses at the sound of Samothes’s voice. He walks out from the living room to give Maelgwyn another awkward pat on the shoulder and put out his hand for Ethan to shake. “You haven’t seen Tristero’s watch, have you?” he asks.

“No,” Ethan says, voice nonchalant, face pleasantly blank. Raising his arm to shake his hand had made his sleeve ride up his arm, and the watch is completely exposed. Maelgwyn’s heart is in his throat. If his father looks down even for a moment, the whole night is going to be turned upside down into an even more nightmarish hellscape than the one he just went through.

Samothes lets out a small sigh of disappointment and drops Ethan’s arm, turning to go. “Alright. Get home safe.” Ethan jerks his sleeve down immediately and looks at Maelgwyn, wide-eyed and exhilarated. Maelgwyn bundles him out the door before he can burst into laughter, which he does the moment they’re off the porch, loudly and raucously. They run down the laneway as if someone is chasing them, as if the various farces and facades they’ve conducted tonight are going to catch up with them. Maelgwyn laughs breathlessly as they scurry around the hedges in front of Samol’s house, where they finally stumble to a stop and double over to wheeze. The moment they can stand upright again, Ethan grabs him in a hug so hard they stumble back and forth for a moment.

“Maudit baptême du crisse,” he says into Maelgwyn’s ear, “I wasn’t sure if we’d get out of that.”

Maelgwyn puts his arms around him, still bubbling with laughter. “Holy shit. You’re gonna get yourself killed one day.”

“But not today.” Ethan kisses his cheek and leans their heads together. Maelgwyn can’t breathe. It’s a normal enough thing to do, on one hand. On the other, the last time Ethan kissed him was when they were playing at being lovers in front of the Tristés. It’s always so hard to tell what Ethan is thinking. 

He stands there in a breathless, smiling daze and can't do anything else. Ethan grins, slaps his shoulder and steps back, starting to back down the street with the implication that Maelgwyn should follow. “Somehow that all went better and worse than expected," he says.

"In every sense," Maelgwyn agrees as he catches up.

"I think I deserve more than one donut, don't you think?"

"Shit, you can have a dozen."

Ethan takes his waist again as they walk, butting their heads together and giving him his stupid grin. "Aw, aren't you a sweetheart?" The tension Maelgwyn always carries in his shoulders melts for a reason he can’t verbalize. He breathes out a laugh and tries not to think too hard on how his heartbeat keeps spiking tonight.

They make their way through the suburbs back to the bus stop, where they sit huddled together against the cold. Ethan rubs his arm to warm him up, and Maelgwyn leans into him.

A thought comes to his mind that he isn’t sure how he feels about. What he means by that is that his chest explodes with an unidentifiable emotion so strong it makes his fingers tremble. There’s been a lot of that tonight. "Shit," he says, "now they'll want you to come for Christmas."

Ethan starts laughing, pressing his head against Maelgwyn's shoulder. "We'll burn that bridge when we come to it." He stays resting there and sighs, sounding content. 

It’s like their con never ended. To an outsider, they would still look as if they were in love. It takes twenty or more minutes for their bus to come, which turns out to be just enough time for Maelgwyn to let himself fall for his own trick.

[charlieknighte]

un jour tu t’en voudras - part 1

Ethan Hitchcock/Maelgwyn

Modern AU - University AU - Fake/Pretend Relationship - Pining - Hurt/Comfort but like significantly more hurt than comfort - french people being terrible

13,060 words

content warnings: terminal illness, drunkenness and smoking, unhealthy family dynamics

For three hundred dollars, Ethan Hitchcock will attend your family's holiday event posing as your shitty art school boyfriend and do everything in his power to wreck the night. Maelgwyn's getting tired of Thanksgiving.

(Featuring art from my dear friend Matt Prairiecryptid!)

For once in his life, Maelgwyn is excited to see Thanksgiving go to shit. 

Nausea always creeps up on him as he moves towards a family gathering, but he’s distracting himself with schadenfreudian thoughts of how much of the night’s chaos and strife is going to be his responsibility this time. They’re going to hate the boy he’s bringing on his arm so goddamn much. Ethan has taken it upon himself to sound like even more of an egregious Quebecois douchebag than usual, like he's cramming a handful of extra vowels into every single word. It would bother Maelgwyn too if it wasn’t a result of an evening back home spent excitedly brainstorming ways to make him insufferable. It’s all Ethan can do to make himself as disheveled and douchey as possible. Maelgwyn’s paying a pretty penny for him to antagonize his parents, after all.

The Hitchcocks rarely advertise their services through anything but word of mouth anymore. Exam cheatsheets, less than legal party supplies, forged doctors’ notes, winning Roll Up The Rim cups—everyone around campus knows there’s not much they can’t get for you if you’re paying. Their acting services don’t come all that cheap, either, but once in a blue moon someone needs to make an ex jealous or fake a family emergency. Maelgwyn had come to them with his dilemma half expecting to be turned down, but they’d just nodded knowingly and named their prices as if they’d performed this particular service a dozen times before. 

So now Ethan’s here in Louisiana with him, blowing cotton candy-flavored clouds into the evening sky as they walk through pretty polished suburbs on their way to Maelgwyn’s grandfather’s house. He didn’t come cheap, even if they gave him a discount for a year of friendship and for the fact that they know how much shit his parents piled on him. Still, Maelgwyn is relieved he’s here. The thought of affronting his family again is much less dread-inducing with the knowledge that he’ll have backup. Ethan is a good friend to have—he’d endeared himself to Maelgwyn mostly by sleeping through the film classes they’d had together and later begging to study with him, then slyly turning their study sessions into outings with his friends. It was one of the reasons Maelgwyn had finally broken out of the lonely shell he’d hidden in through his first year at university.

He can work with him, he knows that much. He just wishes they’d had more time to prepare a plan for the night. Maelgwyn clears his throat. “So, we’re starting off on too good of a footing already. My parents are way too happy to hear I’m bringing home a boy.”

Ethan tucks away his vape and gives him a sideways look. “Aren’t you bi?”

“Yeah, well… I rode out making them think I was straight as long as I could. It pissed my dads off thinking I wouldn’t even consider experimenting.” Maelgwyn pulls a face. “Samot wanted to throw me a coming out party.”

Ethan snorts. “Too much acceptance is really an unusual complaint to have.”

“I know, I know.” Maelgwyn lets the matter slide. It’s a petty thing to bring up, and really the least of his worries when it comes to his parents. “Anyway, you’re also going to get brownie points with Samot right off the bat for being, y’know… good-looking.”

Ethan raises his eyebrows at him and gestures at himself. His Habs jersey and ripped jeans are wildly inappropriate for a dinner party, and he’d purposefully smudged his eyeliner at Maelgwyn’s request. His earrings are even mismatched. “Am I, though?” he says, skeptical.

“I mean your face. You’re not ugly.”

“Oh.” Ethan puts a fist under his chin and pouts at him. “Well, that’s all I get? I’m not ugly?”

Maelgwyn sighs good-humoredly. “Yeah, yeah, you’re pretty.”

Ethan splits into a grin, having gotten what he wanted out of him, and puts a spring into his step. Maelgwyn shoves his shoulder fondly. “Pretty fuckin’ annoying.”

“ Oh! ” Ethan stumbles and clutches his chest. “Is that any way to speak to your beloved? You wound me, mon cher .”

Maelgwyn laughs despite the strange feeling creeping into his chest. He really wishes they’d had a chance to rehearse. Hearing Ethan refer to him so affectionately is strange. Something occurs to him. “Oh, shit. Um, one more thing. My parents are pretty PDA, so we’ll probably have to… 

“Match their expectations so they don’t assume your relationship is crashing and burning?”

“Good way to put it.” Ethan really has done this before. Maelgwyn’s not sure how to feel about that.

Ethan’s hand hovers by his waist. “Can I, then?” 

“Sure.” Maelgwyn lets him put his arm around him and tries to adjust to being held as he walks. It’s not that foreign of a feeling. He’s had to endure the Hitchcocks’ drunken snuggling enough to not be fazed by them being touchy-feely when sober. Still, people don’t usually touch him here. He feels like he’s being flirted with by a spineless frat boy at a party. 

As they near the house, Maelgwyn finds himself nervously hoping he knows enough about Ethan for their false relationship to appear plausible. He knows that Ethan’s the cheery, personable one in relation to his brother, and that his general knowledge of the world is extremely hit or miss. He knows he’s kind enough to once have comforted Maelgwyn as he heaved his guts out in the bathroom of a frat party, and that he lacks enough common sense to have been found passed out in the bushes himself twenty minutes later. Maelgwyn doesn’t know shit about his life before university, but he figures Ethan will fill in the gaps if he needs to. He’s resourceful like that. Spirits buoyed again, he turns them onto the driveway leading up to the house.

Samol’s mansion is deceptively quaint, vines creeping over its two-story columns and cheerful flowerboxes and porch swings decorating the wrap-around deck. You would imagine it had been purchased for a pittance and passed down through generations. In reality, the house had been built as a wedding gift a few years before Maelgwyn was born, and the charming plant life and Victorian-era aesthetic was a result of careful curation. Maelgwyn still doesn’t know if he’s relieved or resentful over his parents giving it up. 

American Thanksgiving has always been Samol's domain, which Maelgwyn is constantly grateful for. He couldn't survive his parents' dinner party posturing again after having to endure it once in October. He doesn’t think Ethan could survive a polite evening in their mansion without snapping either, based on the three-room shithole apartment the Hitchcocks share. It might have inspired him to ask for more money too, which Maelgwyn couldn’t afford without going through the mortification of asking his parents. It’s much better to be here, where their wealth is plausibly deniable. Maelgwyn knocks on the door and braces himself.

There’s a distant hubbub deep within the house as his family politely argues over who’s going to answer. Ethan pops some gum and starts chewing obnoxiously, getting on Maelgwyn’s already frayed nerves—but he supposes that’s the point. Finally, a flash of blond hair approaches through the frosted glass on the door. Samot swings it open, flashing his campaign-trail grin. Maelgwyn’s excitement for his parents to balk at his disheveled, offensively casual boyfriend starts to wane a little as he tries to estimate how much Mayor Samot’s qipao of black silk and golden gilding must’ve cost the taxpayers of Toronto. His hair is in an elegant updo that he must’ve paid an equally opulent amount for.

“Maelgwyn!” Samot says, delighted as if he had no idea that his own son would be attending the family dinner he’s pressured into year after year. He steps out and wraps him up in a perfumey hug, earrings tinkling. Maelgwyn pats his back to participate without having to hug him back. “Oh, it’s so good to see you,” Samot effuses, stepping back. “Come in, come in. Everyone’s been asking after you, sweetheart.” 

Maelgwyn lets himself be shuffled into Samol’s nicely decorated if overly floral foyer. It’s pointless to fight Samot when he’s turned into an overwhelming cloud of energy and charm in his determination to do something. Ethan steps in after them, and Samot looks to him like an apex predator zeroing in on movement. His smile gets a little wider, showing more of his painfully white teeth. “You must be Ethan.”

“Yeah. Hi.” Ethan takes one hand out of his pocket and shakes his hand. Samot’s sharp smile dulls a little as he takes in his outfit. Still, the fact that it stays on his face instead of dropping away entirely means Maelgwyn was right to say Ethan would pass his standards for appearance. He feels a twinge of annoyance. 

An unfavorable twinge passes across Ethan’s face too as Samot’s deceptively slender fingers crush his hand. “Samot,” he says, smile back up to its maximum brightness. “Charmed, I’m sure.” Maelgwyn wishes his parents didn’t feel the need to establish authority over every single person they meet, but then again he wishes a lot of things about his parents. Every interaction with them is a fucked-up give and take exchange mired in the complicated politics of their family.

There are heavy steps behind him, and his heart sinks. He turns unwillingly. Samothes is making his way down the hall with a drink in one hand, as tall and stern and regal and terrifying as he was when Maelgwyn last saw him. That was some time ago. The golden embroidery down the chest of his sherwani matches the pattern on Samot’s qipao, and Maelgwyn has to resist rolling his eyes. He steps out to meet him, wanting to get it over with. “Hi, dad,” he says, and doesn’t deign to add anything else.

“Glad you could come,” Samothes says, hesitating for a nearly imperceptible moment before he pats Maelgwyn’s shoulder heavily. His gaze goes past him and visibly grows darker. He leans in and asks under his breath, “What is this?” As if Maelgwyn’s brought home a stray dog he doesn’t approve of.

“This is my boyfriend.” Maelgwyn turns so he doesn’t have to interact with him further and marches over to take Ethan’s arm firmly and interrupt whatever invasive questions Samot was trying to wheedle him into answering. Samot smiles innocently. Samothes comes to put an arm around his husband’s waist, frowning openly at Ethan. Maelgwyn can watch him doing Ethan’s job for him and making a dozen unfavorable assumptions about him already.

Ethan raises his chin at him in greeting and snaps his gum. “What’s good?” he asks. He’s discreetly wringing out his hand from Samot’s handshake.

“This is Ethan, dearest,” Samot says, leaning into his husband and drawing himself up to his full height to rest his head on his shoulder. His eyes are getting narrower and narrower as Ethan’s dreadfully inappropriate outfit and lack of manners already start to outweigh his pretty face.

“Ethan,” Samothes says, and doesn’t make any attempt to welcome him. Ethan puts out his hand, realizes there isn’t a handshake waiting, fumbles and puts it down. Maelgwyn can see him start to take on a tinge of genuine nervousness. He feels like he should’ve warned Ethan in some way, but there’s really not much more he could’ve done after telling him my parents are politicians. Samothes, who relishes in his position as senator of Ontario largely because of his lack of contact with the public, is really the worst one to have to impress.

Then again, Ethan isn’t really here to impress. “Um, Samothes, I guess?” he says like he’s only half-interested, getting even more insufferable about his gum-chewing.

“Mm,” Samothes grunts, still glaring at him. Maelgwyn imagines how terrifying his parents must seem from Ethan’s point of view, tall and beautiful and hostile in that courtly, dismissive manner of theirs. Making them hate him is going to be easier than he thought. 

“Let’s not keep everyone waiting, yes?” Samot says, nudging his husband and sweeping them back off to the foyer. He throws Maelgwyn a look that says they’re going to talk about Ethan’s outfit later. Maelgwyn can’t wait. 

He kicks off his shoes and shrugs off his coat, throwing it over the rungs of the staircase to the second floor for lack of available racks. “Well, that was hostile,” Ethan remarks, following Maelgwyn’s lead with noticeably less care. “They’re very—”

"Don't joke about how hot my parents are,” Maelgwyn snaps.

Ethan raises his eyebrows at him. "I didn't say anything."

"I know. I’m just saying. I didn’t want to tell you in advance and hear a million dumb jokes from you and Edmund."

"They made a good-looking kid. I didn't really need a warning."

"You can’t deflect from calling my parents hot by flirting with me. That just makes it worse . " Maelgwyn jabs a finger at him accusingly, and Ethan raises his hands.

"I didn't say anything ,” he insists.

Maelgwyn sighs and leads him through the dim foyer and into the bright, bustling living room. The adults are dressed as if they’re attending a formal gala. Adults—Malegwyn hates that he still calls them that unconsciously. They throw a few judgemental glances at Ethan out of their cloud of cocktail dresses and tailored suits. Ethan’s jersey had set him back a few hundred bucks, but no one here would find that an exorbitant sum. “Well,” says Ethan, insolently refusing to be intimidated, “should we make the rounds?”

“Yeah,” Maelgwyn says, though he’s reluctant. He can see his grandfather in his usual rocking chair, swimming in a stark white dress shirt that used to fit him perfectly. He’s laughing at something his sister is saying. Maelgwyn makes a beeline for him, pulling Ethan along by the arm.

Samol catches sight of him and eases himself up, smile so wide and genuine it crinkles the corners of his eyes. He holds out his arms for a hug, and Maelgwyn leans into him much more gladly than Samot. “Hey, grandpa.” He puts his arms around him and feels a moment of protectiveness at just how frail he is.

“It’s been far too long. I hope they’re treating you well up north.” Samol steps back and grins over his shoulder. “And this must be the famous Ethan.” 

“Yeah, hi,” says Ethan, putting out a hand. Samol ignores it and pulls him into a hug, too. Surprise quickly flashes across Ethan’s face, and then he hugs him back politely.

“Good to meet you. I have to say,” Samol says, pulling away, “we haven’t heard all that much about you, son. I’m looking forward to getting to know just who you are.” He smiles, easy and kind. Still, there’s an edge to the statement that Maelgwyn doesn’t quite understand.

“Um, you too,” Ethan says. He can’t bring himself to be rude to Samol, as most people can’t, but he looks slightly discomforted by the idea that people have been wondering about him. Maelgwyn doesn’t blame him when it’s these people.

Samol holds out a hand to the rest of his family. “This is my sister Severea. Her partner Galenica. My… brother of sorts, Tristero.” Severea and Galenica glitter as always, and Tristero’s in his signature jet black suit. They give Ethan smiles in varying shades of politeness as he shakes their hands in turn. 

"Pleasure," he says, greatly enjoying his aggressive Quebecois shtick. Tristero narrows his eyes. His handshake looks painful. 

"Likewise," he says, with his perfect Parisian lilt. Maelgwyn can see the exact moment Ethan stops enjoying himself. Tristero snatches away his hand like Ethan has the plague and turns to speak to Severea in mainland French, abruptly cutting him out of the social circle.

Ethan stands there for a moment, taking furious breaths, and then he turns around to round on Maelgwyn. "You didn't tell me you were French."

"All sorts,” says Maelgwyn. “I said we were all sorts."

Ethan puts his hands over his face and mutters a long string of curse words that contains tabarnak no less than four times. Some of Maelgwyn’s family members look at him strangely, but none of them really grasp what he’s saying. “We’re in Louisiana,” Maelgwyn reminds him. “What did you expect?”

Ethan puts his hands down, but he’s still sulking. “Your family has a hell of a grip,” he mumbles.

“Yeah, it’s from all the political grandstanding.” Maelgwyn puts an arm around his shoulders and turns him away from the adults’ corner of the room and its dozens of empty martini glasses. “You wanna meet my cousins?”

Ethan nods miserably and lets himself be led over to where the Tristé siblings are sprawling across the couches texting. Adelaide is draped across the length of one couch, head propped on her arm, and Angelo is aggressively manspreading at the other end to try to win back some space. They aren’t dressed extravagantly, but they still drip in brand names and good taste and organic locally-sourced handpicked vegan textiles. 

Angelo rolls off the couch and hops up to give Maelgwyn that shining grin that he shares with his father and hates so much. “Bro,” he says, pulling him into a hug and slapping his back, “where’ve you been? Tristero’s made me go on a humblebrag parade around the room, like, five times. It’s your turn, Oscars boy.”

“Oh, god, I hope not.” Angelo’s been out of the house much longer than Maelgwyn has, but Maelgwyn knows he resents his father treating him like a child at these gatherings as much as he does. He punches Angelo’s shoulder amicably. “Nice to see you.”

“This your boyfriend?” 

“Yeah—yeah. Uh, Ethan.”

Ethan jolts to attention and steps in to slap Angelo’s hand. “Hey,” he says, a shade more friendly than he was with most of the family. He seems relieved not to have to shake another hand. Trusting Angelo to be polite unsupervised, Maelgwyn turns his attention to the other Tristé sibling.

“Hey, Adie,” he says, leaning down to give her a one-armed hug. “You guys look great.”

Adelaide squeezes his shoulders. “And your boyfriend looks terrible. You’re trying to piss off Samot, aren’t you?” Maelgwyn gives her a pleading look, and she raises her hands. “My lips are sealed. Enjoy whichever game you’re playing.” 

Maelgwyn breathes a sigh of relief and drops onto the couch across from her. He appreciates that the Tristés consider him to be enough of an ally in the political landscape of their family that they’ll call him out on his shit instead of pretending to fall for it. He and Ethan chat with them during the long lull before Samol announces dinner is served. Maelgwyn mostly sticks to small talk and half-listens to Ethan enthusing about his fencing team with Angelo. It’s completely unsurprising that they get along well. He just wishes he hadn't given Ethan free license to exaggerate his accent. It's already getting grating. 

It’s not even halfway into the night, and Maelgwyn’s weary and itchy and uncomfortably warm. He wishes desperately he could be home, not for the first time and not for the last. At some point Ethan leans over and asks if he can put an arm around his waist again. It helps to have some time to parse the feeling of Ethan’s arm around him in a place he usually hesitates to let people touch. It’s not so bad once he gets used to it.

Finally, Samol comes back from checking on his food and announces that dinner is served. The slow shuffle to the dining room starts, and Maelgwyn endures nearly ten more minutes of laughter and milling about and seats being scraped back and forth. Ethan’s arm around him starts being less of a touch he’s tolerating and more of a grounding sensation. Finally, the seating arrangement is established, with Maelgwyn sitting as far from Samothes as he possibly can and ending up by Samol, who’s taken up the other head of the table. His grandfather smiles at him for a moment before they say grace, eyes merry and twinkling between wrinkled lids. Maelgwyn can’t help but smile back. 

Samothes settles himself in his seat with gravitas, looking gravely out over candlesticks and seasonal decorations and heaping plates of Louisiana home cooking. "Dear lord," he begins, projecting his booming voice. There’s a flutter as hands are clasped and eyes are closed. "Thank you for this food. Bless the hands that prepared it. Bless it to our use and us to your service—"

Ethan suddenly shoves back his chair with a loud noise, makes sure people are looking as he spits his gum into his hand, and gets up to throw it out in the kitchen. The table sits in stony silence until he returns. Maelgwyn desperately holds in laughter. When Ethan returns, Samothes says in a low, dangerous voice, "Would you like to finish our grace, Ethan?"

He freezes. "Me?"

"The lord seems to have moved your spirit." 

There's a nervous chuckle around the table. Ethan's squirms, waiting to see if it's a joke that will blow over. It isn't. He opens his mouth and hesitates. As if someone else is saying it for him, he mumbles distantly, "And help us to give you glory each day through Jesus Christ our lord."

An amen goes around the table, and dinner properly begins. Samothes looks grimly pleased. Ethan rips apart a dinner roll violently. Maelgwyn briefly worries that Samothes has genuinely upset him, but Ethan's anger seems to evaporate a moment too quickly. Or maybe he’s imagined it. It’s never easy to tell what Ethan’s thinking. Too many of his actions are the result of one facade or another.

Either way, Ethan eventually pulls himself up from his childish slouch to serve himself like everyone else. He goes for his dinner fork, hesitates and purposefully picks up his dessert fork instead. Samot goes to say something, seems to think better of it and just purses his lips. Maelgwyn has always noted that Ethan has strangely impeccable table manners when he wants to, and he’s thrilled that he’s deciding to use his knowledge of etiquette for evil. He picks up his own dinner fork, because to do otherwise would be a little too suspicious, and digs into his food enthusiastically. Samol’s jambalaya has often been the only thing getting him through this fucking holiday.

"So, Ethan," Samol begins, smiling warmly, "where do you spend your Thanksgivings when my grandson isn't dragging you out to my neck of the woods?"

Ethan gives him a small, polite smile. Samol is too hospitable for anyone to stay standoffish when speaking to him. "At friends', with my brother." To tell the truth, Maelgwyn is tremendously envious of the friendsgiving he’s constantly missing out on. For Thanksgiving to be a pleasant night and not a drawn-out affair of family drama and faux-politeness would be a dream.

"Not with family?" Samot asks from across the table, masking judgement with concerned curiosity.

Ethan snorts. “Wouldn't know where to find them for it, and wouldn’t care to see them." They have the opposite problem, really. Maelgwyn has too much family, and Ethan has next to none. Ethan has never seemed to give much of a shit about it, which Maelgwyn envies tremendously. He wishes with all his heart and soul that what his family was doing didn’t bother or affect him.

Samot takes a slow sip of wine. “Well, I’m sorry to hear that.” His eyes are intense over his glass as he watches Ethan rub at his eye, purposefully smearing his eyeliner a little further.

Ethan shrugs and shovels more shrimp in his mouth. Samothes gives him a narrow-eyed, skeptical look Maelgwyn’s learned to fear, but Ethan seems completely unfazed by it. “This is great,” he says as an aside to Samol, mouth is full of shrimp. Samol smiles brightly, and Samothes moves on, having recognized that Ethan is outplaying him by winning his father’s favor. The strain between them tightens a few fractions more. 

“ Puis-je avoir du sel? ” Tristero says, gesturing to the salt shaker at Ethan’s elbow. 

“ Ouais, ” says Ethan, leaning unnecessarily hard into the a to make it absurdly clear that he isn’t saying a proper oui. He reaches out and drops it into Tristero’s hand. Tristero’s eyes widen as if horribly offended, and he straightens his back self-righteously. Maelgwyn braces himself for one of his insufferable speeches on table etiquette.

“ Il ne faut pas passer le sel de la main à la main, ” says Tristero, growing steadily more hostile with each word. “It should be set down on the table in front of your neighbor so they can pick it up for themselves. I just thought I should let you know, seeing as they don’t seem to teach etiquette up in your country.”

“Oh,” Ethan says, reaching the point of hostility much faster. “I see. Well, let me put this in a way you’ll understand, since there seem to be so many cultural stumbling blocks between us. Je m'en fous.” 

The table quiets slightly, everyone finally able to understand Ethan’s profanity (except for Samothes, who keeps eating his rice in blissful ignorance). Maelgwyn and the Tristés try to suppress snickers and smiles. Samot goes to snap at Ethan, finds himself in the position of not wanting to discipline a stranger, and instead says in exasperation, “Maelgwyn!”

Maelgwyn tries to stop smiling and look appropriately serious, but is only halfway successful. “Ethan,” he says, touching his arm.

“He started it,” Ethan says sulkily.

“I know, babe.” Maelgwyn finds himself rubbing Ethan’s shoulder and feels foolish both for acting like his father and for using a term of endearment for the first time. He should’ve rehearsed it earlier, as Ethan had. He drops his arm and goes back to his food, hoping he isn’t red in the face. Samot looks disappointed in him for taking Ethan’s side, but he doesn’t instigate the matter further.

“Well, it was always said that passing salt de la main a la main would cause a quarrel,” says Samol good-humoredly. There’s some reluctant chuckling around the table. The matter having been smoothed out enough to ignore, they continue picking at their plates. Still, there’s a considerable strain underpinning the evening. Ethan and Tristero keep trading blows, though neither escalate as far as the spat over the saltshaker. A steady, dull pain grows in Maelgwyn’s chest, and he starts desperately avoiding speaking with his parents. He almost thinks he’s home free when Samothes abruptly clears his throat and asks, "How are your films going, Maelgwyn?"

Maelgwyn swallows. "We don't really put out anything till third year, dad." 

It’s not technically true, but he doesn't feel like explaining the intricacies of his projects to his father and watching his eyes glaze over. He waits for a followup question and gets none. Samot touches Samothes's arm, making it clear to Maelgwyn that he told him to ask, and then he speaks up instead. "What about you, Ethan? What do you study?"

“Performing arts,” Ethan says, sounding appropriately contemptuous and uninterested in regular human interaction for someone of his major. Maelgwyn can see Samothes’s face completely drain of hope that he had brought someone normal home. Samot progresses to rubbing his arm comfortingly. It’s awfully early in the evening for him to be doing that, which is a good sign.

“I see,” Samot says, “and do you know what you plan to do with your degree?”

“Perform art,” Ethan says flatly. There’s a chuckle around the table, mostly from the Tristé siblings and Samol. Ethan splits into a shitty grin. “I’m joking. You can’t do shit with an arts degree. It’s join the army or marry rich.” 

The table finds this less entertaining. Samot’s hand goes still on his husband’s arm, and Maelgwyn can see him digging in his nails. Ethan sips his drink peacefully like he was just making pleasant conversation and as if Samothes isn’t staring daggers at him less than a day into knowing him. Maelgwyn finds himself wishing he hadn’t been thrown under the bus by association, but he still has to respect the balls Ethan has to have to act so unbothered by his father’s ire.

Samot lets out a fake, tentative laugh, pretending this is a joke to give him an opportunity to backpedal. Maelgwyn realizes he might’ve had too much wine. “But you… do have goals other than that.”

“Well, marry rich. I already said that.”

“That’s not…” Samot sighs. “Maelgwyn’s going to make films. You haven’t considered acting in them?”

“Sure.” Ethan drops his cutlery and pushes back his chair with a harsh scraping noise. “I mean, in case you haven’t noticed, you seem to be doing well enough for yourselves to look down your noses at me. I’m sure you’ll bribe someone to give your son a few dozen mil, right?” Samot’s mouth drops open in indignation. Ethan sits back, gesturing around at the dining room in all its faux-antique charm. He’s smiling one of his most horrible smiles. “Hell, I’m sure some portion of all this is willed to Maelgwyn, and your tête de la famille will keel over soon enough, won’t he?”

If Ethan’s previous outburst had quieted the table, this one completely kills all activity around it, forks clattering still and jaws pausing mid-chew. The silence is murderous. Adelaide chokes on something politely and brings a hand to her mouth. Samot sits back with his wine, staring at Ethan with open, intense malice for the first time in the night.

Samothes holds his knife like he wants to slice Ethan open with it. “What did you say?” he says, voice low and dangerous. It’s redundant. Everyone knows what he said. Ethan blinks at him.

“I said you’re doing well enough for—”

“No, you know what I mean. How dare you?”

Ethan slides back down, looking less confused than pissed off now. Maelgwyn tries to say something, but all that comes out is a squeak. It’s still enough to get Samothes’s attention, and he fixes him with his awful stare instead of Ethan. “How do you manage to be with someone like this? How could you trust him enough to tell him?”

Maelgwyn wants to disappear. He can’t even slink down in his seat, he’s so frozen with fear. The table hovers in its silence, no one daring to breathe. Samothes’s directed malice fades to an aimless fury. “You didn’t tell him,” he says quietly. It’s more of an accusation than a question. Maelgwyn shakes his head wordlessly. He feels like he was just plunged under six feet of water. Samothes sighs and looks to Samot. “Tell your son—”

“ My son?” Samot snaps, sitting forward again and sloshing wine onto the tablecloth in his indignance. Maelgwyn stares down at his plate and pushes around some rice, chewing mechanically without tasting his food.

“Aw, don’t kick up such a fuss,” Samol tries to say, but he’s spoken over immediately.

“I’m sorry, what was I not told?” Ethan says, something hostile about his tone even though Maelgwyn silently begs him to stay soft. He might’ve been pushed too far. 

The table becomes abruptly quiet again. Samot and Samothes sit looking at each other, not knowing how to break the news. They’ve never known how to talk about it. It’s like the mere mention of it has plunged them back into grief as fresh as the day the news was first broken to them.

“It’s stage four,” Samol says softly. Ethan blinks at him, opens his mouth to ask a dumb question, and then understands and slowly melts into horror.

Samothes pushes his chair back with a horrible screech and gives Maelgwyn a look before leaving for the kitchen. The blame is shifted to him as always. Maelgwyn didn't do enough, didn’t behave properly enough, wasn't enough. He should’ve better informed Ethan about his family’s history, and yet he should never have brought it up—or brought him home—to begin with. Tristero stands up in a huff and completely leaves the room, slamming the door to the back porch. Angelo and Adelaide jump up to go after him, giving Maelgwyn looks of apology and pity. Severea regards her brother with a deep sadness, and she and her partner rise and follow them out more slowly. The festively decorated table suddenly seems ridiculous and inappropriate in the sober atmosphere. Maelgwyn feels like slinking under it, pressing his head into a corner and hiding for the rest of the night. He can hear Samothes washing dishes aggressively, trying to regain some sense of control over the world. The way he bangs each dish brings Maelgwyn back to the arguments that used to echo through this house in his childhood, and how badly he would flinch at every little noise.

Samot rises from the table, still fixing Ethan with an openly malicious look. He walks around the table slowly, scaring Maelgwyn more with each step. "You've got a little something," he says, and then hauls Ethan up by the scruff of his neck like a kitten and scrubs vigorously at the corner of his eye. He drops him just as quickly, looking furiously satisfied, and storms off to the kitchen after his husband. Ethan sits there, blinking and stunned. When he looks at Maelgwyn questioningly, he can see that Samot had wiped off the eyeliner he's been so insistently smudging towards his temple. 

It almost makes Maelgwyn laugh despite everything, and then the hissing whispered argument beginning in the kitchen reaches him and all mirth he could’ve summoned evacuates his body abruptly. He took this too far. He knows that. He sinks down in his chair, every harsh consonant he can hear hitting him in the stomach like a blow. There’s nothing he can do. There never has been.

He, Ethan and Samol are the only ones left at the table. "I'm sorry," Ethan says, soft and genuinely regretful.

"It's alright, son. You didn’t know." Samol gets up and claps him on the shoulder. Maelgwyn watches Ethan re-evaluate how frail he is, how much trouble he has getting himself upright. For a moment Maelgwyn wants to burst into tears and rest his head against his grandfather’s bony shoulder and tell him everything, lay out their whole horrible scheme and try to explain why he thought it was a good idea. 

He remembers confessing the fear and unease of his home life to Samol when he’d been a child in the midst of his parents’ impending separation, and the relief of Samol telling him he’d take care of it and letting him sit in his Marlboro-scented car as he walked into the house to chew his fathers out. Maelgwyn aches for the same sort of relief, but he still can’t bring himself to speak. He watches Samol make his way across to the door out to the back porch and rest his hand on the handle. “I’ll smooth things over,” he says in his effortlessly comforting manner, and steps out. 

Maelgwyn feels a fraction better, but only that much. Even though there's no one left at the table, he finishes his dinner silently. Ethan sits there for a few more moments, then follows suit. He seems unsure of what to say.

“I didn’t think it would come up,” Maelgwyn says when he can be verbal again. It feels like a woefully inadequate excuse. Ethan looks up at him from his dish. He doesn’t seem angry with him, for which Maelgwyn is awfully grateful.

“I guess it worked in our favor,” he says, but he sounds unsure. He pushes his food around a little and then looks up again, eyes anxious. “I am sorry.”

“Don’t—Don’t worry about it.” Maelgwyn doesn’t want to talk about this anymore. He stabs a piece of shrimp a little too hard. It’s quiet for a few minutes as they finish their food. The argument keeps gaining traction in the kitchen, growing more and more heated. Samol is coughing outside. Something about the harshness of the sound makes something in Maelgwyn snap. 

He gets up abruptly and slams open the door to the porch. It’s darker than he expected it to be, none of the porch lights on and the suburbs glittering in the moonlight in the distance. Samol is sitting on the edge of one of the porch swings, a lit cigarette between his fingers as he rests his hand on his knee. The Tristé siblings lounge on another of the benches, looking sullen. Their father leans against the railing at the edge of the deck. They all blink at Maelgwyn’s sudden, violent entrance.

"You're not supposed to smoke anymore,” Maelgwyn snaps at his grandfather.

"Maelgwyn," Tristero says warningly, but Samol waves at him and goes to stub out his cigarette.

"Naw, he's right. C’mon, Tristé, ain’t there been enough unpleasantness tonight?” Tristero glowers at Maelgwyn, but relents. He shoots an even dirtier look over Maelgwyn’s shoulder as the door opens. Ethan steps up beside Maelgwyn and puts a hand on the small of his back. Maelgwyn isn’t sure if it’s supposed to be a comforting touch or just a part of the act, but it makes him feel better to have someone at his back. 

Tristero takes a step towards the staircase that leads down to the backyard as if Ethan’s very presence disgusts him. Ethan takes bold steps out to meet him, hand outstretched. "It's was good to meet you.” Tristero regards him with a moment of wary disdain, trying to figure out what he's playing at, before he clasps it.

"Have a good rest of your night," he says, enunciating his accent pointedly. The moment he lets go and steps away, Ethan jams his hand in his pocket like he wants to get rid of the feeling of touching him. Maelgwyn appreciates his dedication to his job, even if the rivalry he’s trying to embroil himself in might be a little bigger than his paygrade. 

Tristero descends the stairs and walks off across the lawn into the dark. Galenica and Severea wait for him by a streetlight. Samol stays behind, rocking back and forth on his porch swing quietly. Maelgwyn wonders if he hates the family falling apart because of him as much as he does. “Where’s everyone going?” he asks Samol. All the venom has gone out of his voice, and he sounds small and tired.

“Just to take a breather,” Samol says evenly. Maelgwyn wouldn’t be surprised if he was lying to spare his nerves. His grandfather’s guitar is leaning against one of his rocking chairs, and Samol hobbles across to sit in it and pick up a quiet tune. Even if it doesn’t quite match the situation, it’s soothing. Maelgwyn crawls onto the porch swing he just vacated and sways back and forth miserably. 

(Read part 2 here)

[charlieknighte]

a creature born / a fire set

Genfic - Background Samot/Samothes

Character Study - Family Angst - Found Family

3,512 words

A gift for BYZANTIUUM in the Secret Samol fandom exchange

content warnings: the horrors of war™, unhealthy family dynamics

Sometimes, as the son of gods runs with thieves and scoundrels, he thinks that it’s not so bad to have lost everything he once knew.

Sometimes, as Maelgwyn slogs down rows of army tents and lifts his face to his father’s volcano for the hundredth time that week, he feels as if this war is all he’s ever known.

The corner of Marielda that his army is situated in isn’t particularly pleasant, the flaming sea bracketing them in on three sides, the hot, moist air frizzing up Maelgwyn’s curls and bringing a never-ending sweat to his brow. Even at night, the sea never quite lets the city fall into darkness, sitting like a dim red horizon behind the cubes of bright yellow light cast by the army’s temporary lodgings. The sight used to be beautiful before it fell into monotony. 

Tamsen, his second-in-command, follows close at Maelgwyn’s heels, her ever-present and barely concealed anger and contempt not much of a breath of fresh air. She doesn’t generally direct it at him, but he can feel it simmering in her speech as she reports the latest updates from the front-lines. She’s not one to sugarcoat things, not one to pretend the cost of this war is just numbers on a page. Sometimes Maelgwyn wonders if she hates his fathers for all of this. Sometimes he wonders if he can hate his fathers, but he knows that he could never bring himself to.

Do you love him? Samot had asked him the last time they spoke about Samothes, his tone of voice expectant, knowing the answer and only needing to present it to prove his point. When Maelgwyn was younger, he’d often worry that his fathers didn’t love each other anymore as they shook the house with their arguments. Now that he’s older, the truth that you can love someone and still hurt and hurt and hurt them makes him feel sick. Of course he loves him. Of course they both love him, and yet here they are. 

As they grow close to Maelgwyn’s own tent, Tamsen reaches the end of her report and settles into gloomy silence. Maelgwyn tiredly asks, “Anything else, Tamsen?”

She snaps right back to professionalism. “There's been a scuffle between two lieutenants. Not the first time. Their captain wants you to have a word with the instigator.”

Maelgwyn blows his hair out of his face, half purposeful and half out of annoyance. It sticks to his forehead, and he has to swipe it out of the way instead, irritation mounting. He’d have much preferred to be able to continue to his bed in peace. “At what time?” 

“Well, sir...” She stops in front of a tent and gestures. The path she’d taken him on must have been engineered to get this over with. Sometimes he nearly resents her efficiency. He suppresses a sigh and lifts the flap of the tent, stepping inside. It’s small, but not as cramped as a lower ranking officer’s bunk might be. At his intrusion, there’s some shuffling behind a curtain separating the beds from the cluttered, meagre living area. 

“Lieutenant?” Maelgwyn asks, his voice stiff and formal and sounding like it comes from another person entirely.

There’s a groan and more shuffling, like someone turning over in bed. “What d’you want?”

Half-asleep, Maelgwyn guesses. And ill-mannered. “I heard about your run-in with your fellow lieutenant. Your captain sent me to have a word.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then an impassioned thrashing and indignant thump as the lieutenant gets out of bed. “Well, you can tell Thackeray that instead of snitching, next time he can come to me directly," he says vehemently, finally emerging from behind the curtain with a rumpled uniform he clearly only just threw on. "I'll kick his ass—" It takes him a remarkably short amount of time after recognizing Maelgwyn to gain a sense of composure and scramble into a salute. “I mean, I'll deal with him myself. Sir. Sorry.” He grimaces to himself for a moment before settling into a pleasantly blank expression.

Something about him stops Maelgwyn cold. He's barely even a teenager, but it’s not that—uncomfortably young troops are far too familiar around here. It’s just that he's so familiar. Brown skin and sharp eyes and curls cut according to Marieldan vogue, but too loose to be local. He looks more like a westerner. And something about his contemptuous self-assurance, even now that he’s being deferential—the shrewdness of his eyes—I'll kick his ass—somehow he jolts Maelgwyn back to his best times as a child, running through the streets of his village after his best friend, stolen pies in their sticky fingers, a similar sly gleam in her eye. Maelgwyn feels like all the wind has been knocked out of him at the intensity of the memory.

“What's your name?” he asks, mouth dry.

“Hitchcock, sir.” Underneath the formal tightness of his voice, he still sounds squirmy, like he’s expecting a punishment to be handed down any moment.

Maelgwyn sighs, rubs at his face. If only there was a way to phrase what he wonders without crossing a dozen lines. “Try not to get yourself killed.”

Hitchcock's carefully blank expression wrinkles a little bit, and he looks at Maelgwyn like he's grown an extra head. “Okay,” he says, clearly caught off-guard by the lack of formality or reprimands. Maelgwyn is still reeling. He wishes he could ask him if he knew a little girl in the plains, but he knows it’s impossible for him to have been alive back then. The unnatural length of his life is starting to catch up to him. The silence between them is beginning to drag on uncomfortably long. Hitchcock stares at him without any regard for etiquette. The intensity of his eyes is suddenly too much.

“As you were,” Maelgwyn says, self-conscious at having been seen in a moment of conflict. He backs up, floundering for the tent flap and stepping out before his grip on himself can start to slip. As he bursts out into the warm, muggy night haphazardly, Tamsen looks at him quizzically. He shakes his head to clear it and squares his shoulders again, as a general should. “Anything else to report?” 

“Nothing, sir.” She cuts her eyes away from him, pretending not to have seen his moment of weakness.

“Then you’re dismissed for the night.”

Some nights, he almost regrets dismissing her. Those are the nights when he’s too heartsick to pretend that it doesn’t hurt when his soldiers’ laughter grows quiet as he passes them, when they keep their expressions stiff and serious around him as if they think that’s what he wants. They’re the nights that he wishes he could sit around a fire and trade war stories with someone without being afraid of revealing too much. 

Maelgwyn quietly imagines that as Tamsen clicks her heels together sharply and salutes. Maybe it’s for the best. Maybe her anger towards the gods would make her too bitter towards him if she knew. They turn together in opposite directions, Maelgwyn continuing down the rows of tents as they grow larger and more lavish. Contrarily, his tent is functionally plain and small, and not as cool and inviting as the lieutenant’s had been. Not the tent a son of Samothes would be given, if that was how he was known.

Some nights—those same nights that he wishes for a cup of ale and a warm fire among friends—he yearns for a place in a crowded bunk, hearing the muffled noises of other soldiers as they turn over in their creaky beds or grumble in their sleep. Tonight, he tries to put the thought out of his mind as he gets ready for bed. It’s too hurtful to dwell on. He doesn’t bother lighting a candle—his bedtime routine is so utilitarian he barely needs to do anything but strip off his uniform and fall into bed. Inside this tent, he has nothing, and usually it’s easier than the overwhelming number of fires outside waiting to be put out.

He sees Hitchcock again a few weeks later, in a lineup of officers waiting to be promoted by his hand. As he shook hands, pinned medals to chests and offered congratulations, most soldiers flinched, gazes unable to stay on his face for more than a moment. Their grips were limp and their thank yous rushed, too awed by his holy presence to keep it together. Maelgwyn feels like he should’ve gotten used to this by now.

Captain Hitchcock only looked up at him and grinned.

---

It’s odd, to have stumbled out of a university basement with a gauntlet affixed to his hand and not more than a handful of his memories of life. Most days Maelgwyn frantically spins in a daze of confusion, grasping at what memories he has, trying to cobble them back together into a sense of self and winding up frustrated when the pieces don’t fit as he feels they should. Other days—rarer than they should be, creeping up on him and overwhelming him with blissful surprise that he didn’t see coming—he feels steadier. Not quite good, but okay. He forgets his struggle to try to remember to be himself and just is. Those days feel like a fresh start.

That’s the benefit of forgetting the rest of his life—it feels almost as if this is all he’s ever known. Being dragged along on whirlwind heists, each disastrous and joyful, a spinning dance that at turns nauseates and delights him until he learns how to settle his stomach and feel consistent glee. A nervous thrill running through him as he pockets something that isn’t his and knows he’s gotten away with it. Running down alleyways after the Six—after his friends, his friends—heart thumping a dizzyingly fast tempo, feet aching, whoops rising from his throat unbidden but welcome. They always cut it close, and that’s part of the beauty of it—being crammed into smaller and smaller spaces and always engineering some way out. Always managing to find their way back to a safe place deep under the city, where they can share drinks and congratulatory hugs and sit on the floor sorting through their loot far into the night. On nights like these, Maelgwyn feels at peace.

Tonight’s take was excellent. They shake out their bags and pockets into a huge pile between the haphazardly arranged couches in the Six’s basement, voices still high and boisterous from adrenaline. Aubrey falls upon the pile first, snatching away a book of alchemy that one of the Hitchcocks swiped—specifically for her, undoubtedly. She scampers off to curl up in one of her favorite chairs, nose already buried deep between pages. Sige is next, scooping up a brick-sized tome Maelgwyn doubts anyone else would be able to lift or would care to spend hours poring through. Castille takes a little longer picking through the pile, finding the books on magical theory and Marieldan history and natural sciences that Maelgwyn’s come to know are her favorites. The Hitchcocks take more of an interest in finding drinks than books, which is about what he expected. 

As Maelgwyn settles next to Castille, one of the twins presses a glass into his hand with a grin. It’s white wine. Maelgwyn doesn’t quite know why, but the lightness relieves him. He takes a generous chug, excited to slip into the giddy, warm chaos of the night that his friends always manage to create.

He’s long since settled into an arrangement to share Castille’s books—they have overlapping tastes, and what with their shared amnesia, a similar drive to brush up on the history they’ve forgotten. They settle into a comfortable quiet in their own corner as the rest of the Six shout out their discoveries as they find them, buzzing now from the excitement of getting their hands on knowledge that’s been untouched for what might be years, jealously hidden away by Samothes’s heavy hand. 

Maelgwyn knows, objectively, that he is Samothes and Samot’s son. Castille had told him, pity clear on her face as she realized he didn’t remember. He knows, but it’s funny—he doesn’t feel like the son of a god, no matter how hard he tries. When he tries to think back to his past, he feels a sort of nausea at remembering something he’ll never be again and could never claw his way back to. The vastness of his forgotten past seems so threatening, like it hides horrible secrets he’d be better off not learning. It’s hard to put out of mind. At the very least, it contrasts with the lightness and joy of his life now, even when the spaces between it stretch long. He is happy here, welcome here, at times even able to put his fathers’ war out of mind.

That’s why his heart sinks when he realizes the first book he’s picked up is on exactly that— the war. The things Samothes writes about Samot… Maelgwyn could never imagine writing things like this about someone he loves. They make him ache to read, secondhand pain that’s filtered down from them despite how little he remembers of being their child. In Samothes's furious scripture decrying the boy-prince's rebellion, he can see through the anger to the deep sorrow of betrayal beneath. In even the cruelest of his propaganda against  his husband, there’s reluctance, a sense that he’s holding himself back from showing the worst of Samot’s nature out of some remnant of respect. Maelgwyn knows in the depths of his mind that Samothes could strike much more cutting blows if he wanted, that there’s a cold cruelty in Samot he can’t quite remember the specifics of but used to feel like searing ice.

And yet… Samothes loves him. Even with rebellion. Even in a war.

There’s incredible tenderness to be found in his fathers’ writings, if one goes looking. Love letters, hundreds of them, thousands of them from the millenia they’ve been alive. Collected and annotated, dripping with endearments and genuine adoration. Even after reading about the violence they inflict on each other, their love letters beg the question—how could such a deep love have been lost completely? How could a fraction not have persisted, even after everything?

Do you love him? Samot asks expectantly, a dozen years and a thousand miles away.

Maelgwyn closes the book with a snap, hands clammy. He sits with it for a moment, letting the warm ruckus of his friends’ voices wash back over him and remind him where he is and who he isn’t. He sits until his hands feel more like his own again and then pushes the book back into Castille’s pile, trying to find something more innocuous in its place. He emerges with a guide to edible plants in southern Hieron. He traces his un-gauntleted fingers over its cover, far more pleasant memories sparking in the depths of his mind. 

Some nights his grandfather would come to their house in the woods, and when he would step inside he would begin shouting so suddenly it shocked Maelgwyn. It would sound less like an argument and more like when one of Maelgwyn's fathers would lecture him, one-sided and allowing for little rebuttal. Eventually his grandfather would step back out, fuming. He would stare up at the sky and take a long breath, and when he looked back down at Maelgwyn he would always be smiling kindly. Why don’t we take a walk? he would say. Maelgwyn would be so relieved to get away from the arguing for even a few minutes that he would’ve gone anywhere with him.

His grandfather would walk Maelgwyn and his friends out to the forests and plains and creeks around their mansion, leading them through the terrain in a way that implied familiarity with every inch. He'd spend hours teaching them what berries to eat, what leaves to pick for tea. To remind you that I'm always here to look out for you, he told Maelgwyn cheerfully. It had helped—when Maelgwyn felt lonely, as he often did, he would wander out into the thick yard behind their house and immerse himself in the forest, feeling his grandfather's warm, comforting presence. 

He realizes now that his grandfather is the continent itself, of course, and he had meant for Maelgwyn to seek his presence in a literal sense. It’s hard to feel him now, here, where Maelgwyn’s father has such power. The streets are densely packed with stone and metal and concrete, but still—bits of Samol still manage to peek through. The roots of trees forcing their way into the gaps between cobblestones, flowers determinedly poking up in the tiniest pockets of dirt, moss and lichen lightly dusting the roofs of houses. Nature always finds its way through no matter how hard Marielda works to keep it out, like a nagging parent. That’s one thing from his past Maelgwyn doesn’t mind holding onto. 

It hits him that he’s going to have to give this book away when he’s done, and he’s seized by a creeping sorrow. It wouldn’t be fair for him to keep it—it’s merchandise, and more than that, it’ll likely fall into the hands of someone who could use the knowledge in its pages. But at the same time, he knows he’s the only person in the continent who could appreciate it for more than the simple guide it is. To him, it’s a piece of something—someone—he loves, wood pulp paper and plants distilled into dyes. Its weight in his hands is precious to him.

He sits, frozen and conflicted. Castille, oblivious, erupts in a flurry of laughter and gets up to help Aubrey lift a tome almost as big as her. Maelgwyn can’t move after her, left in a private bubble of confusion and trepidation that even noise can’t burst. One of the Hitchcocks flops down beside him in Castille’s place, already a little too drunk. Maelgwyn doesn’t think much of it until he realizes Hitchcock is looking at him. He feels a pang of fear that he’s being judged until he realizes there’s a sharp sort of curiosity in Hitchcock’s eyes, even as he lazily lets his head loll back against the couch.

Maelgwyn’s attachment to Castille is straightforward, but he doesn’t understand why Hitchcock is familiar to him. Some of the memories that try to surface when he looks at him seem to be from an impossibly long time ago, before Hitchcock was even supposed to be born. He remembers wildly tearing through the roads of his childhood with only mischief on his mind, hands grubby, curls untamed, chasing a girl with a mud-spattered dress who screamed far more wildly than him. Maelgwyn would probe him for possible connections if he wasn’t too nervous to reveal such an intimate memory, and if he trusted Hitchcock not to spin it for his own benefit. Crafty little worm, he thinks, his fondness soothing his anxiety once again. 

Hitchcock suddenly sits forward, nearly tipping over unsteadily but catching his balance. He gestures at the book in Maelgwyn’s hands. “Take it," he says earnestly. Like he could read the hunger in Maelgwyn’s eyes. 

Maelgwyn is taken aback. He stammers, and knows that tips Hitchcock off to the fact that he guessed correctly. “What? It's… it’s merchandise. You need it."

Hitchcock glances back at the rest of the Six, engrossed in cheering Aubrey on as she determinedly drags her gargantuan book up to a table. He leans in conspiratorially. There it is again—that familiar glimmer in his eye, the one that brings back the wild, free times of Maelgwyn’s childhood.  "No, we don't. Not that badly. Take it."

Maelgwyn is breathless at the idea. Of course he’s stolen things before—many, many times during his tenure with the Six—but they were never for himself. It’s been so long since Maelgwyn owned something of his own, something that hadn’t been handed down to him by his parents or their followers, bearing a heavy burden of expectation or responsibility. Maelgwyn imagines dog-earing the book’s pages and writing notes in the margins and pressing flowers between chapters, leaving tangible marks of his existence all his own, and nearly bursts into tears. 

He slips it into his jacket discreetly, the shiver like the one he’s learned to enjoy after a theft running through him. Hitchcock grins with infectious, mischievous glee, and Maelgwyn can’t help but laugh with him.  “C’mon,” Hitchcock says, pulling him up by his hands. “Let’s dance.” 

Maelgwyn lets himself be pulled, stumbling, to the center of the room, trepidation overwhelmed by excitement. The Six cheer for them as they start some partner dance Maelgwyn has no name for, Hitchcock whirling him around in dizzying circles until they’re both breathless with laughter, stumbling against each other as the rest of their friends find their own pairs and fill up the dance floor around them.

If Maelgwyn closes his eyes and lets himself melt into the moment, he can forget he was ever a god’s son, ever chosen to fight a war that wasn’t his, ever a historical figure before he was a person. He can wash those thoughts away with this life he’s built, no matter how temporary. This is all he’s known, and all he ever needs.

[charlieknighte]

you find shelter somewhere in me

Edmund Hitchcock/Sige Coleburn

Established Relationship - Domestic Fluff - Mild Hurt/Comfort

1,342 words

In a pub in Marielda in the year before the world is eaten by the dark, Sige Coleburn gets a small cut on his arm.

Sige closes his apartment door behind him and leans against it, the world-weariness he can usually keep at bay washing over him. Edmund is upon him before he can have more than a moment to catch his breath. "Sige. What happened, love?"

Sige shrugs off his coat even as he fusses over him. At this point he should really be used to Edmund letting himself in, but he still feels a little sore that he caught him like this. "Got in a barfight. I'm alright."

"You're bleeding."

Sige looks down at the arm Edmund has grabbed insistently. There's a cut across his forearm from a knife he disarmed a moment too late. "It's not too bad."

"Sige—look, come and sit down. I'll run you a bath." 

"No, you don't have to do that, baby." And yet Edmund somehow maneuvers him over to the couch and disappears. Sige flops down and closes his eyes, cradling his arm. He craves a stiff drink and a soft mattress and some peace and quiet, but frankly he’s never going to get the third when Edmund is around. He makes do with the couch and some relative tranquility until Edmund comes to fetch him again, and then stumbles after him to the bathroom. 

It’s only once he sheds his clothes and gets in the bath that it occurs to him that Edmund might’ve had the right idea. "Thanks, baby," he says quietly, splashing water over himself and watching the water run red. 

Edmund, who has taken it upon himself to wash his bloodstained shirt in the sink, smiles at him. "Should I even doubt that you won?" he says.

"Nah. Wasn't a fair fight for the poor guy.”

“I’m proud of you, darling.” It strikes Sige as a slightly backwards—and very Hitchcock—thing to be proud of him for, but he doesn’t feel like inciting a famously unwinnable moral discussion with Edmund tonight. He sinks down into the water and closes his eyes, letting the warmth of the water ease his sore muscles and melt away what lingering resentment he'd brought back from the bar. A few splashing noises come from where Edmund is still fussing around with his shirt, reminding him he’s not alone. That’s starting to feel like a good thing. 

Eventually the bathwater gets cold and Edmund goes off to find some place to hang his clothes, and Sige gets out to towel-dry and change into a clean pair of underthings. He’s lucky he only got lightly banged and bruised, but his knuckles are complaining fiercely. He limps back to the bathroom and finds his first aid kit, finding some gauze and hoping he can do a half-decent patch job.

“Hey,” Edmund says. Sige hadn’t noticed him standing in the bathroom doorway. He steps in closer and plucks the gauze right from Sige’s hand. “Let me.” Sige is too baffled to protest for a moment. Edmund takes his hand and turns it over, and starts wrapping his knuckles carefully.

Sige finds him voice again. “Not that I don’t appreciate this, baby,” he says, and watches Edmund stop what he’s doing to look up at him with his pre-argument expression. “But I’m… I’m okay. Really. You don’t have to worry about me like this.”

Edmund visibly softens and reaches up to cup his face, being careful not to touch his bruises. "Sige, I’m not worried. I’ve never seen someone you couldn’t stand up to. That doesn't mean I'm not going to take care of you when I can." He stands on his tiptoes and kisses him softly. "I love you so much. Alright? Let me do this for you."

Sige doesn't know what to say, and even he's not dumb enough to turn away kindness when it's ofdered this profusely. "Okay." He watches Edmund go back to tending to his wounds and starts to notice how much differently he does it than anyone else Sige has gone to. It’s always been with impatience that Sige patches up his own wounds, and on the rare occasion that they’ve been serious enough to warrant a visit to a medic it was altogether a businesslike affair. Edmund puts far more care into it, cradling his hand tenderly and wrapping it so gently his wounds don't sting. Sige's chest feels tight and funny, like he might cry. 

Edmund tucks in one last bit of gauze. “All done,” he says lightly, lifting his hand to leave a kiss on his bandaged knuckles. Sige is reminded of the way his mother used to kiss his scrapes and how it would take the hurt away as if by magic.

He reaches up and cups Edmund's face, feeling so impossibly warm towards him that he already knows he's not going to be able to put it into words. "Thank you," he says, quiet and earnest.

"Of course." Edmund smiles against his palm, reaching up to cradle his hand in his again. "Let's get to bed, yeah?"

"Yeah." Edmund doesn't let go of his hand. Sige lets himself be led through the house to his bedroom, and then tucked in and fussed over for a couple of minutes until Edmund's satisfied he's comfortable. He tucks his face half under the covers and smiles as Edmund walks away.

Edmund didn't bring nightclothes as always, so he borrows one of Sige's shirts. It comes down nearly to his knees. Sige watches him bustle around in the bathroom, taking off his earrings and washing his face and indulging in the comforts of relative privacy. It's sweet that he trusts Sige enough to leave the door open and let him see. He likes having Edmund here, he thinks sleepily. He's small and bright and talkative and makes Sige's apartment feel less like a shack attached to a workshop and more like a home. Sige knows coming home to him every night isn't all that realistic considering his situation, but it’s a comforting daydream to keep around in his stead.

He watches Edmund walk to the bed and shuffle in, admiring as much of him as he can in the dim light. Usually Sige likes to reach out and pull him closer by the waist, but this time Edmund is the one gently guiding him near. Sige lays his head on his chest and lets his eyes slowly slide closed as Edmund runs his fingers through his hair. He didn't think he needed to be taken care of like he was tonight, but he's starting to remember how long it's been since anyone was this gentle with him. The answer hurts. Since the moment his parents died, he hadn't gotten much in the way of reassurance other than the occasional pitying pat on the shoulder. The Six are a little better about affection, but still--he can’t remember the last time he was given this much time and attention. Edmund is careful in a way that no one's ever thought to be with him, like he's a breakable thing with too much to carry. And isn't he? 

Sige buries his face in Edmund's chest, not wanting to remember the world outside this room anymore. "I've got you, my love," Edmund murmurs. He rubs Sige's back and leaves little kisses on the top of his head. Sige finds himself on the verge of tears again. He wonders why what threatens to set him off is feeling genuinely, properly loved for the first time in years, and then decides he doesn't want to know the answer.

“I love you,” he manages to say before his throat closes up completely, grateful that having his face pressed against Edmund’s chest disguises what a wreck he is. 

"I love you too." Edmund cuddles him closer and hums softly. Sige tries and tries not to cry and is eventually successful. Maybe one day he’ll be comfortable enough to let Edmund see that. 

There’s nothing else he can do but find one of Edmund’s hands to hold and fall asleep to the sound of his heart, forgetting how used he is to the quiet.